Man shot dead in Del Paso Heights, Sacramento neighborhood’s second homicide in 3 days
Police are investigating a homicide in Sacramento’s Del Paso Heights neighborhood Monday morning, authorities said. It’s the fifth shooting incident in the city and county since Saturday afternoon, four of which have been deadly.
Officers responded to reports of shots fired near Dry Creek Road and Harris Avenue and arrived shortly before 1:30 a.m. to find a solo-vehicle collision, the Sacramento Police Department said in a news release. Police located a man inside the vehicle suffering from a life-threatening gunshot wound, police said.
The man succumbed to his injuries, and fire personnel pronounced him dead at the scene.
Homicide detectives are investigating, working to identify a suspect and motive in the shooting, police said. The victim will be identified by the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office pending notification of family.
Other recent shooting violence in Sacramento
The overnight shooting comes after a violent weekend in Sacramento, including the tragic death of a child at a Del Paso Heights park, one of multiple bystanders struck in a drive-by shooting. Between that shooting and three others in the city and county, at least two others were killed and nine more were wounded Saturday, police and sheriff’s officials said.
The Sacramento Police Department said based on preliminary investigations, detectives do not believe Monday morning’s homicide is connected to any of the weekend shootings.
On Saturday, a 9-year-old girl identified by family as Makaylah Brent was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting that wounded three other people near Mama Marks Park, including two of Makaylah’s relatives: a 6-year-old girl, who is expected to survive, and a woman who was taken to a hospital in critical condition. The shooting happened shortly after 1 p.m.
Family members, along with Sacramento City Councilman Allen Warren, who personally knows the Brent family, said the gunman missed the intended target and struck the three related bystanders. A fourth shooting victim, a man, transported himself to a hospital and was in stable condition, Police Department spokesman Officer Karl Chan said.
The Brent family pleaded to the shooter as they mourned: “Turn yourself in.”
In another multiple-victim incident Saturday afternoon, this one outside city limits, Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies responded to a shooting at a halal market in Arden Arcade that left two people dead, including the gunman of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and two other men injured shortly after 3 p.m., authorities said. The Sheriff’s Office on Monday announced that one of the victims in the shooting has died.
The three victims were found injured inside and outside the grocery store and were taken to hospitals, sheriff’s officials said. One of the injured victims was remained hospitalized Monday in critical condition, and the other was expected to survive his injuries, sheriff’s officials said.
Detectives said they are not investigating the shooting in the Afghan market as a hate crime, but on Monday sheriff’s officials said detectives do not believe the suspect and the victims knew each other did not say if the shooter knew the victims. The names of the dead victim and the suspect had not yet been released by the Coroner’s Office.
In yet another deadly Saturday afternoon shooting, city police found a 17-year-old boy dead of a gunshot wound inside a vehicle that struck a power pole in the 8300 block of Jackson Road, near Folsom Boulevard and Granite Regional Park, just after 3:30 p.m. No suspect information or motive was known in that homicide. Family and friends have said his name is Jaylen Betschart, a senior student athlete at Sacramento Charter High School.
And later that same evening, the Sacramento Police Department said three victims were shot and hospitalized in another drive-by shooting, this one near the 3400 block of Mabel Street in North Sacramento’s Strawberry Manor neighborhood. Two men and a 17-year-old girl were all hospitalized with injuries not considered life-threatening, Chan said. No suspect information was available.
Law enforcement officials have not said any of the weekend incidents are being investigated as connected to one another But Mayor Darrell Steinberg said police and community leaders are working to “step up our violence prevention efforts,” in a statement tweeted Sunday morning.
Steinberg called the death of the 9-year-old bystander a “senseless act of violence,” adding: “The escalation of shootings here and across America is unacceptable.”
This story was originally published October 5, 2020 at 8:40 AM.
