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Two-year-old Jasper Wu was asleep during a ride from San Francisco to his house in Fremont when a bullet ended his short life.
Jasper was in the car with three adults, including his mom, who was driving, when a bullet that police believe came from gangs shooting at each other on the highway went through the windshield and killed him around 2 p.m. on Saturday, according to the Associated Press.
The California Highway Patrol said the victims were not targets. Instead, they became caught between two cars with people exchanging gunfire.
Carl Chan, the president of Oakland's Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, is helping the family with funeral arrangements.
"How could you ever expect a bullet to fly in and hit your child while asleep? No one would expect that," Chan told The Mercury News.
Jasper's father was coming from China on Monday to bury his son, the AP reported.
"Jasper will never wake up again. This is horrible," Chan said. "Today is my birthday and I'm saying that because I'm so lucky to be celebrating my birthday and Jasper could not have a chance to celebrate his own second birthday in December."
A 3-year-old boy was also wounded in the foot last month while in a car on Interstate 580 in Oakland after someone opened fire.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below
Highway shootings are difficult to investigate because witnesses are traveling at high rates of speed and collecting evidence can be challenging, said Mary Knox, senior deputy district attorney for neighboring Contra Costa County.
Knox said Contra Costa County saw a spike in recent years in gun violence tied to gangs on segments of Highway 4 and Interstate 80. That led officials to install a surveillance system of cameras and license plate readers that she said significantly reduced gun violence on freeways there.
"Gang members were actually following each other up onto the freeways to do the shootings because they knew how challenging those investigations are," Knox said. "Witnesses are traveling at like 65 miles an hour so they're miles down the freeway by the time we even know we have a crime and finding the exact shooting location to recover casings and things was very challenging."
Knox said preventing innocent bystanders from getting caught in the crossfire was exactly why officials wanted to set up the freeway security system.
"It was just so crucial to get our program up and running before a tragedy like this happened," Knox said.
