Thursday was another deadly day in Salinas.
Three victims, from two separate shootings, were the latest casualties in a surge of gun violence in the city 10 shootings in 11 days. One of Thursday's victims died.
The violence is at a level Salinas police say they have not seen before.
"I can't remember one of this magnitude," said Deputy Chief Cassie McSorley as she stood at Madeira Avenue and Terrace Street near where a 15-year-old boy was fatally shot, becoming the city's 21st homicide victim of 2009.
"We are obviously very concerned," she said.
The victim died at a local hospital after he was shot in his driveway in the 500 block of Terrace Street, police said.
It was the second of two shootings Thursday, the first occurring about 40 minutes before the homicide.
About 1:35 p.m., police were dispatched to North Sanborn Road and Del Monte Avenue where two people were injured in a shooting.
A 19-year-old man was shot multiple times in the upper torso and flown to a Bay Area hospital with life-threatening wounds, police said. As of Thursday night, the victim was in critical but stable condition, police said. A second victim, a 26-year-old man, was shot and treated at Natividad Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries.
As fighter jets flew overhead, practicing for this weekend's California International Airshow at Salinas Municipal Airport, emergency crews carried the shooting victims into an ambulance. And as in a battle zone, voices had to be raised just to be heard above the sound of planes flying overhead.
According to witnesses at the scene, two men were shot multiple times next to a bus stop on the street corner. Onlookers crowded around the large blocked-off area as authorities closed the entire Del Monte Shopping Plaza and stopped all traffic between North Sanborn and Green Street.
In tears, the sister of one of the victims stood with police.
According to McSorley, the victims ran inside a nearby taco shop to call for
help. The bloodied clothes of one of the victims, which had been cut and removed from the body, were laid on top of a chair inside the shop