An East Bay mother says her newlywed son was on his way to the grocery store when he was shot and killed during an apparent road rage incident in San Lorenzo Sunday afternoon.
Rienhart Asuncion, 30, was fatally shot just before 5 p.m. Sunday in the area of Hesperian and Lewelling boulevards in San Lorenzo. As of Monday evening, the shooter was still at large.
"I got trauma, I got trauma," said Anna Tolentino, Asuncion's mother. "I can not sleep. We do not sleep."
Tolentino said her son was planning to start a family and was working to get his wife back in the Philippines a visa. He was on the phone with her when the shooting happened, explaining to her how someone had just cut him off, according to Tolentino.
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"Yelling and screaming and then suddenly shots, many shots," Tolentino said.
Witness Dave Cobb saw Asuncion's truck and another car speeding in what appeared to be a chase that started blocks away at Ashland Avenue. After both cars stopped at a red light at Hesperian and Lewelling, Asuncion got out of his car to talk to the other driver, Cobb said. The other driver started shooting, firing at least six times.
"It seemed like the dialogue was pretty intense, pretty quick," Cobb said. "As I got out of the car, that’s when the shots rang out."
Tolentino, whose family has lived in the area for decades, is trying to make sense of how a simple trip to the store took her son away.
"This is too much now in the Bay Area, not only Oakland," she said. "I don’t know. It's not safe no more."
Investigators on Monday were still looking for the shooter, but they haven't released many details.
Tolentino said even if someone is caught, nothing can take away her family's pain.
"They can not return back my son," she said.
