Fear On The Freeway: CHP Investigating Three Car-To-Car Shootings

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — California Highway Patrol is looking for the person who shot into three cars on two Sacramento-area freeways Monday night.

It only took an hour for the suspected shooter to cross two highways and hit three cars. CHP says two people, a 20-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman were hurt.

According to California Highway Patrol, two of the shootings happened in the westbound lanes of Interstate 80 near Watt Avenue and Longview Drive, near the Business 80 split. The third happened along northbound Intestate 5 at the Del Paso Road offramp.

Heather Robinson from Sacramento says, "It's very frightening to think of that."  She lives off of the Del Paso Road exit where one of the shootings happened.

CHP is investigating whether the shootings are connected.

"It could just happen sporadically with no rhyme or reason, and that causes a lot of anxiety and fear for our community," said Robinson.

CHP is investigating whether this rampage was random or targeted. Investigators are now searching through freeway cameras to find more evidence. For now, they just have this description: a man driving a dark-colored four-door sedan seen at all three shootings.

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"The thought that there is a menace or a safety issue right now on the freeways is not realistic. We don't have all the pieces, but we're working to put those together and paint a bigger picture," said Mike Harris with CHP.

Video captured by a CBS13 viewer shows the traffic slow-down after CHP closed down I-80 from Madison Avenue to Longview for three hours during their investigation.

Both victims are expected to survive. CHP says car-to-car shootings are rare on freeways. They are more common on surface streets in the Sacramento area.

"They're not as common here in Sacramento, thank goodness for that, but this type of stuff, our officers are out there doing proactive enforcement and proactive patrol so we have a visual presence to try and deter this type of behavior," said Harris.

CHP is sending bullet fragments to the forensics department to see if the casings match to confirm the connection. It's not known at this point whether the victims had any connection to the shooting.

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