Bakersfield Mass Shooting: 6 Dead, Including Gunman, In California

In a mass shooting incident, an unidentified gunman fatally shot five people before killing himself in Bakersfield, Southern California on Wednesday.

Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood confirmed during a news conference the gunman killed his wife and a man at a trucking company Wednesday evening and then chased another man from the company, before fatally shooting him in front of a nearby sports store. He then went on to kill two men at a nearby residence.

The gunman then hijacked a car with a woman and a child inside at Fillmore Avenue. Fortunately, the woman and the child managed to escape from the vehicle safely. He then killed himself when he was confronted by a sheriff’s deputy after he drove to Edison highway. The entire incident took place in 15 minutes.

“This is the new normal, if you look across the country. Six people lost their lives in a very short period of time,” Youngblood said, describing the incident as a mass shooting.

There is no immediate word on what sparked the shootings. Officials are determined to find out “why this started and why so many players were involved and the connection because obviously these are not random shootings,” Youngblood said. Except for the wife, there was no immediate word on whether the other victims were related to the gunman.

Youngblood said about 30 people witnessed the shootings and were being interviewed by officials.

In an unrelated incident last month, a person was killed in an officer-involved shooting in Bakersfield. The incident led to the closure of Highway 99 in Bakersfield for a brief period.

The officer responded to the scene following a report of a crash involving a white pickup truck. At the scene , he saw a saw a man running around in the area with a weapon. He tried to make contact with the man and that was when he made advances toward the officer with a knife, which lead to the the former firing his weapon.

The California Highway Patrol did not release much information about what happened in the crash except the man , the officer shot, had flipped his pickup truck just minutes before the shooting, ABC 30 reported.