Mom mourns son killed after Oakland freeway shooting and crash

OAKLAND, Calif. - Araceli Hernandez visits her son's grave in Oakland every day.

"I think we have to keep it with flowers, because he doesn't have a stone yet," she said Friday as she surveyed the grassy plot not far from a fountain at the cemetery.

"I know he's down there. It's just still hard to believe that he's here," she said.

Her son, Abner Hernandez, 21, died in May after the Nissan he and three friends were riding in was sprayed with gunfire as they were chased from Lake Merritt and onto Interstate 580. Their car crashed and overturned on the freeway near Seminary Avenue in East Oakland.

"When I'm home, I still feel my son is gonna come home," she said, her voice breaking.

Her son was shot, but both he and a friend, James Dale Jr., 22, died as a result of the crash. The two others in the car were shot and wounded.

Then, in an unusual turn of events, the father of her son's friend, a parolee also named James Dale, 40, was shot and killed Wednesday night on the same stretch of freeway. But his body ended up in a Chevy Astro van at 51st Avenue and International Boulevard, more than two miles away.

Surveillance video obtained by KTVU shows that van being parked at about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday. A man then gets out and walks away.

Sources tell KTVU the elder Dale's killing appears to be gang-related. 

Hernandez said, "Whether he was a gang member or not, these people who killed him had no right to do that."

She wanted to distance her son from any criminal activity.

"I just want to make clear that my son was not a gang member," she said.

She thinks the two freeway incidents are related.

"I believe it is. Why was he killed in the same area?" she asked.

No arrests have been in the deadly incidents, which are under investigation by the California Highway Patrol.  

Her son most recently worked at Whole Foods Market near Lake Merritt.  He was the second of her three sons. 

"He wasn't a perfect son, you know, but he was hard-working," she said.

She says no matter what one's background, no one deserves to die violently.

"Whatever gang have to do with gang, that's on them. Why kill innocent people?" she said.