Driving on highways can be stressful, but Southern California freeways host some of the worst traffic in the country. Many of us know the ire that builds when someone cuts us off, almost rear-ends our cars, or merges without checking their blind spots, but not many of these infractions is cause for someone to pull out a gun and start shooting.
On Friday (May 21), tragic news surfaced out of Los Angeles that a six-year-old boy named Aiden Leos was shot and killed while riding in a vehicle with his mother. It has been reported that the person fired off the shot because the woman gave them the middle finger, but that information has yet to be confirmed by authorities.
The incident occurred in the city of Orange in Orange County, just miles south of Los Angeles proper. “She was hysterical obviously, ‘my baby, my baby,’ and we didn’t know what happened right away, it took a bit to figure that her son got shot,” Reyes Valdvia, a reported witness to the crime, told CBS LA. “She was driving, another car, I guess, passed her up, and as she changed lanes they went behind her, basically they shot into the back of the car, and they hit her son.”
Relatives stated that Aiden was sitting in the back of the vehicle in his car seat when a bullet traveled from behind the vehicle and through the trunk, striking the little boy. Aiden’s sister, Alexis Cloonan, detailed the experience during an emotional press conference. “He said ‘mommy my tummy hurts’ so she went and picked him up and he was bleeding on her, she had blood on her clothes and he started turning blue and that’s when the ambulance took him and that was the last time my mom saw him alive.”
NBC Los Angeles reports that the mother admitted to police immediately following the shooting that the other vehicle cut her off on the freeway, so she gave him the finger. She later merged over to the exit and it was then that her car was struck.
Watch a news clip about the tragedy below.