The first of two shootings six hours apart on the same Santa Ana street Thursday night resulted in the death of Frankie Sandoval.
Police say the 18-year-old Santa Ana man was shot in the head, most likely by a gang member.
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Witnesses told cops that Sandoval was talking on his cell phone outdoors in the 700 block of west 10th Street some time before 11 p.m. when several men approached and asked which gang he belonged to.
Cops were told anywhere from a single shot to several shots then rang before the unknown number of men darted off.
When police officers arrived, Sandoval was lying on the sidewalk suffering from a gunshot wound to the head.
A Santa Ana Police spokesman told the Orange County Register Sandoval did not have a criminal record but that evidence shows he did belong to a gang. That evidence is not specified.
At
4:33 a.m. Friday, Santa Ana Police were called to an apartment complex three blocks from where Sandoval was slain. In a stairwell there officers discovered another man nursing a
gunshot wound to the head. He was rushed to a hospital and is expected to survive.
Detectives do not believe the shootings are related.
The department says anyone with information leading to the arrest of whoever killed Sandoval could get up to a $50,000 reward as part of the Gang
Homicide and Felony Assault Reward Program. Call (714) 245-8648 if you know anything.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.