A California woman and her 12-year-old son were shot at by a complete stranger right in front of a police officer. The woman was killed, and the boy was injured.
According to KTLA, the attack happened around noon on Wednesday when 44-year-old Denise Chiffon Berry, pulled up to a patrolman and said she was being followed by men in a white Cadillac. The officer told her to park in front of him and assured her that he would look into the matter.
As Berry was backing up to park, the white Cadillac pulled up, and Robert Washington jumped out and started shooting into Berry’s car before the officer had even unbuckled his seat belt.
Watch a full report on this tragedy below:
The officer shot and killed Washington, but Berry had already been killed, and her son was injured.
The boy told officers the incident may have started when he and his mother noticed a man with his feet hanging out of the window and laughed.
“This is what the little boy is saying,” sheriff’s homicide Lt. Dave Coleman told the Daily Breeze. “Mommy says, ‘Look at that, isn’t that funny?’ and they made eye contact. She drove on and they began following her.”
“[The shooting] appears to be random or misguided,” Coleman continued. “We’ll have to figure that out. … We know that, at some point, the little boy made eye contact with the suspect. We don’t know if that’s what set him off.”
Coleman called the woman a “tragic innocent,” adding, “The bottom line yesterday is she was driving down the street, minding her own business. (The gunman) got out with a mission. … You almost can’t drive around and make eye contact.”