Police are looking into gunfire that startled a West Berkeley neighborhood Saturday morning.
Neighbors told Berkeleyside they heard gunfire at about 9:20 a.m. near Seventh Street and Channing Way or Dwight Way.
When police responded, they found no victims but ultimately located a car tire that had been damaged by gunfire, said Lt. Andrew Rateaver of the Berkeley Police Department.
No one has been arrested in the case, but the incident remains under investigation, Rateaver said.
One neighbor told Berkeleyside on Twitter she “heard a car driving fast, 6 gun shots, then tires squealing as the car drove away.”
“I hope everything is ok. So sad,” she wrote.
Police were still on the block more than two hours later, said another neighbor.
She said she heard gunshots from the car “as it raced down the 2400 block of 7th street this morning.”
Police were called to the same neighborhood last July, to Bancroft Way and Seventh Street, after the occupants of one vehicle shot at someone in another vehicle. No injuries were reported.
There has only been one shooting in Berkeley so far this year where someone was reported to have been injured. That incident took place earlier this month in the 1600 block of Russell Street. The victim was expected to survive, authorities said at that time.
There were also reports of gunfire in Berkeley in January and February, but no victims were found.
Tragedy has, however, struck this year just over the Berkeley border. A 27-year-old Berkeley man was killed in a fatal shooting in North Oakland in early February. His mother rushed him to Children’s Hospital in North Oakland, but he later succumbed to his injuries in an ambulance before he could make it to Highland Hospital, the regional trauma center.
