UPDATE, NOV. 3, 12:59 P.M.: The driver found dead and with a gunshot wound in the Chevy van that wound up in the Alberto's Mexican Restaurant parking lot last night has been identified as 36-year-old Juan Manuel Diaz.
Santa Ana police have only identified Diaz's passenger, who was also shot, as a 23-year-old male.
Their shooter remains at large.
]
ORIGINAL POST, NOV. 3, 10:03 A.M.: Two men who took bullets in the 1600
or 1700 block of Edinger Avenue in Santa Ana drove off in a Chevy van
that wound up heading westbound on the wrong side of the street
Wednesday night before colliding at the Grand Avenue intersection with a
VW Beetle stuffed with adults and children. In the end, the driver of
the van that wound up in the Alberto's Mexican Restaurant parking lot
was pronounced dead at the scene. His passenger and an aunt, uncle and
their three nieces and nephews–ages 5, 9 and 13–in the Bug were
hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries
Santa Ana police have released no identities.
This all went down around 9 p.m. Wednesday. Police are unsure if the
shootings that started the chain of tragic events were gang related.
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.