Mother of 4 Killed in Road-Rage Shooting

Oakland man says 'coward with a gun' killed his wife
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 29, 2014 3:43 AM CDT
Mother of 4 Killed in Road-Rage Shooting
Police released this photo of Avina, a medical receptionist.   (Oakland Police Department)

Luis Lopez Gallegos says he is now a widower with four children to raise—just because someone didn't like the way he drove. In what police are probing as a road-rage attack, 30-year-old Perla Avina was shot dead Sunday afternoon as the couple was driving to their East Oakland, Calif., home from a supermarket, reports the Oakland Tribune. Gallegos, a mechanic, says that after an altercation, a "young guy with a gun who doesn't care about life" pulled up alongside his car and sprayed it with bullets, killing his wife as she sat in the front passenger seat.

"I wish God would have took me before they took her. I wish I would have gotten shot," says Gallegos. The couple's four children are three girls ages 1, 4, and 8, and a 14-year-old boy. The younger children "don't know what's going on," the boy tells the San Francisco Chronicle. "But my older sister, she's just trying to hold it down, like me." A reward of up to $30,000 is being offered for information leading to the shooter. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan tells KTVU that police have been told to make the murder a priority and will be "putting investigators on overtime and really focusing on this." (More road rage stories.)

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