I-80 shooting kills man, injures woman

A man was killed and a woman was injured in a car-to-car shooting on an East Bay interstate late Tuesday night, shutting down part of the freeway for more than six hours in an incident that officials said may be related to another shooting from last week on Interstate 80.

Around 11 p.m. Tuesday, the California Highway Patrol responded to reports of a shooting on the eastbound side of I-80 just west of Pinole Valley Road in Pinole, said Officer Sean Wilkenfeld, a spokesman for the CHP.

The first officers on the scene found an Audi with two victims — a man who was driving and a female passenger — both suffering from gunshot wounds. They were taken to a nearby hospital, Wilkenfeld said, but the man died from his injuries. The woman is expected to survive.

Wilkenfeld did not identify either victim, other than to say they were both in their 20s or 30s and from the East Bay.

Investigators believe that the shooting was not random and that the two victims were targeted from another moving vehicle, Wilkenfeld said. Officers said it could be tied to a Nov. 2 shooting on westbound I-80 near San Pablo Dam Road. In that case, a Hyundai was headed west on the road around 4 p.m. when a driver in another car shot multiple rounds into the vehicle, hitting the driver.

The person driving the Hyundai lost control of the car before coming to rest off-road near the shoulder, Wilkenfeld said. The driver’s injuries were described as “major but non-life-threatening.”

For Tuesday night’s crash, all lanes of eastbound I-80 were closed from around 11 p.m. to about 6 a.m., Wilkenfeld said, as investigators combed the freeway for evidence.

“It’s a very large crime scene,” he said. “It involved multiple lanes and was very long because the cars were moving.”

Officials did not release a suspect description. Wilkenfeld asked anyone who witnessed the shooting or who was driving on that stretch of I-80 Tuesday night around 11 p.m. to contact the CHP at (800) 835-5247.