A 29-year-old mother of two was fatally shot through the window of the SUV she was riding in as the car approached the Bay Bridge toll plaza on Thursday morning. While the shooting was targeted, authorities say, it's not clear that she was the intended target.
Victim Amani Morris has been identified by her mother, who spoke to KTVU yesterday following the tragic incident. Morris's mother says that her daughter was en route to a final interview for a job at a childcare facility when she was fatally shot through the passenger-side window of the SUV her fiancé was driving. Her two sons, ages 3 and 5, were in the backseat at the time of the shooting, but were not injured, and the fiancé was not injured either.
As KTVU earlier reported, CHP received word of the shooting at 9:12 a.m. on Thursday. It took place just east of the West Grand Avenue ramps, in the westbound lanes of I-80 near the Bay Bridge toll plaza.
BREAKING: Police are investigating reports of a possible shooting on the Bay Bridge on Thursday morning, the California Highway Patrol said.
— KTVU (@KTVU) November 18, 2021
Multiple lanes of traffic have been shut. https://t.co/NB4i1fVQeF pic.twitter.com/UjHhjBzoOf
A woman riding in a vehicle was shot dead along the westbound approach to the Bay Bridge toll plaza Thursday morning. https://t.co/2b9XiJP8SQ
— KPIX 5 (@KPIXtv) November 19, 2021
A suspect vehicle reportedly pulled up alongside the SUV and shot into the vehicle multiple times. One bullet went through Amani Morris's phone and struck her in the head, killing her instantly.
CHP has not said whether the license plate cameras at the toll plaza captured an image of the suspect vehicle. No description of the suspect vehicle has yet been released, and no motive is yet known for the shooting.
Morris's Mother, Alicia Butler, tells KTVU that she had just gotten off the phone with her daughter minutes before her death.
"20 minutes before this happened she had called me, we were FaceTiming, she and my grandkids and my husband," Butler said. "We were all on the phone talking and laughing and she said, ‘I’ll call you when it’s over.' Except for that was the last time I talked to her."
Morris's death is the second to occur as a result of a freeway shooting in Oakland in less than two weeks, following the November 6 shooting of two-year-old Jasper Wu.
CHP says that there have been over 80 shootings on Alameda County freeways in just the last year alone. Those also include the May 18 shooting up of a party bus on I-580 in Oakland during a woman's 21st birthday, which killed two people and injured seven others.
Photo via Instagram
