A man was killed in a shooting on Vallejo’s Sonoma Boulevard late Wednesday night, marking the city’s 14th homicide of the year, according to police.
Officers arrived shortly after 11:30 p.m. to a shooting incident near Sonoma Boulevard and Louisiana Street, where they found a man suffering from at least one gunshot wound, said Vallejo Police spokesperson Sgt. Rashad Hollis.
Emergency responders pronounced the man dead at the scene. An employee with the Solano County Coroner’s Office said Thursday morning that the agency had no information to release about the victim’s identity.
Hollis said police have made no arrests in connection with the fatal shooting.
The shooting follows several recent deadly incidents on the same stretch of Sonoma Boulevard, a portion of state highway cutting from north to south through Vallejo lined with local businesses and homes. Less than two weeks ago, a person was shot near Alabama Street, a block north of Wednesday’s homicide scene. In early July, a Vallejo police chase ended in a deadly crash near the intersection of Sonoma and Tennessee Street.
Vallejo city council member Tina Arriola organized a peaceful protest on Saturday to address the highway’s dangers. Cars caravanned to the California Highway Patrol’s division office on Benicia Road where a handful of residents held signs in the parking lot, according to news coverage of the event. The group implored the state agency to send units to help patrol Sonoma Boulevard, or Highway 29, as Vallejo’s police department faces a shortage of officers.
“We don’t have enough safety presence on Sonoma Boulevard, and this just proves that,” Arriola said about Wednesday’s homicide. “It’s not safe for anybody.”
Vallejo has 73 sworn staff members, including 36 officers patrolling the city of roughly 125,000 people, according to an update provided at Tuesday’s city council meeting by Interim Police Chief Jason Ta.
Meanwhile, Governor Gavin Newsom has dispatched CHP resources to Oakland and San Francisco in an effort to improve public safety in those cities. In February, Newsom deployed 120 CHP officers to Oakland and the surrounding East Bay to crack down on violent crime; the operation has so far resulted in more than 500 arrests and the recovery of 1,100 stolen cars, according to Newsom’s office. Earlier this month, the governor announced that he would quadruple the state agency’s presence in Oakland for the next four months.
In Vallejo, resources from state law enforcement would make a “huge impact,” Arriola said.
“This is not going to get any better unless we get highway patrol presence,” she said. “They could be heroes.”
