A Sunday evening sideshow led to Oakland's 11th homicide of the month and of the new year, with two other people injured by gunfire.
The sideshow took place around 7:30 pm Sunday in Oakland's Eastlake neighborhood, on the 1000 block of East 12th Street, as Bay Area News Group reports. (KTVU and NBC Bay Area place it at the 900 block of East 12th Street.)
Gunshots were picked up on the city's ShotSpotter system at 7:46 pm, prompting a police response. "Scores" of spectators were present at the sideshow, as Bay Area News Group reports, but they may have scattered when the shots were fired.
Police say that one of the participating cars in the sideshow that was doing donuts struck and injured a spectator, which prompted another spectator to begin firing on the vehicle.
No one in the vehicle was injured, but three bystanders, two men and one woman, were hit by bullets.
Per the news group, a 23-year-old Oakland man and a 24-year-old woman were both in stable condition after self-transporting to the hospital Sunday night.
Police were still trying to identify the male victim who was fatally shot.
A bullet-ridden vehicle, believed to be the one that struck one of the spectators, was later recovered by police near the scene of the sideshow.
No arrests have been made, and anyone with information about the sideshow or the shooting is asked to call homicide investigators at 510-238-3821 or 510-238-7950. Anyone with video or photos from the sideshow may email them to [email protected].
This was Oakland's 11th homicide so far this month, and the 11th of the new year.
The incident is likely to prompt a new round of discussion at the Oakland City Council about how to address the problem of sideshows. Oakland has a law, like other Bay Area cities do, passed two years ago, criminalizing the promoting of sideshows, however it's not clear how much it has been enforced so far. The law makes the promotion of sideshows a misdemeanor offense punishable by a $1,000 fine and/or six months of jail time.
A roving sideshow in Oakland in early December ended with a BMW in flames, and video from the incident showed a spectator knocked off their feet into the air by a spinning vehicle, though that person's condition never came to light in the media.
The X account FriscoLive415 reported on sideshow activity in San Francisco on Saturday, which started around 5 pm in the vicinity of McLaren Park, and later moved into the Mission District.
