UPDATE, JULY 18, 12:44 P.M.: Costa Mesa Police have identified the victim and provided a description of his shooter.
The man who was shot by a pedestrian while driving his white Ford Expedition near Paularino Elementary School around 11 p.m. Saturday is Wilfren Banejas-Rodriguez, 26, of Costa Mesa.
He is listed in stable condition at Western Medical Center in Santa Ana, where he is being treated for non-life threatening gunshot wounds to his left arm, left shoulder/neck and left side of his torso.
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Banejas-Rodriguez, a security guard in uniform, had stopped near the school's parking lot, presumably to meet briefly with a friend. That's when the unknown assailant approached the driver's door and began firing.
The shooter, who used an unknown type of handgun, is described as a male
Hispanic in his 20s or 30s. He was last seen wearing black clothing and a
hooded sweatshirt drawn around his face.
The guard, who was treated at the scene by Costa Mesa Fire Department responders before being rushed to Western Med, has no known gang affiliations, and police do not believe the shooting was gang related.
The police statement corrects the day of the shooting reported in the original post.
ORIGINAL POST, JULY 18, 8:58 A.M.: Loud bangs bounced off the Great Wall of Target and into my Costa Mesa bedroom window around 11 last night.
At
first I figured the Disneyland fireworks had run late, but a check of
the local police department blotter revealed a different blast source: a
drive-by in reverse.
Some guy walking near Paularino and Coolidge avenues fired several shots at a car driven by a 26-year-old man around 11 p.m. Saturday*.
The shooter darted off into the night. No one yet knows what prompted the shooting; the guy in the car was driving to a friend's house. He was later taken to a local hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
Anyone with information that might help police is asked to call Costa Mesa Police Det. Mike Delgadillo at 714.754.5197 or Sgt. Ed Everett at 714.754.5395.
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.