Oakland police identify drive-by shooting victim

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- Oakland police are investigating a deadly shooting that occurred near an Oakland park Tuesday morning.

The shooting was reported at 7 a.m. on Scotia Avenue near Golf Links Road near the southeast edge of Knowland Park.

So far this year, there have been 17 homicides reported in Oakland and now we can add another one.

This normally quiet, upscale East Bay neighborhood is reeling Tuesday after gunshots were fired, leaving one man dead outside the house he grew up in.

Every homicide is a disappointment and a tragedy to a family, but in this neighborhood it is also a major surprise.

In a neighborhood full of nice homes and pride of ownership, the police tape, evidence markers and the grieving family hardly seemed to fit.

The grandmother of Marcus West Jr., 21, is mourning her grandson's death. " One boom, that's it, but my daughter says it was four gunshots, but the policeman said it was many more," Jinnie West said.

Art Cott said he heard the shots and arrived at the scene shortly after it happened. It sounded like little, "pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, shots about seven of them. Then, the young man was laying out there in the street and he bled out on the street, shot in the head and just bled out," he said.

West Jr. had a 2-month-old son and had plans to work in construction.

He's the victim of what neighbors describe as a drive-by shooting.

"He was the only person who gets me, we just laugh at the same thing," West Jr.'s sister Marlashe West said.

His cousin sees this eighteenth homicide as part of an ongoing tragedy. "I would say why another life, you know what I mean? Black people get killed out here every day," one woman said.

Oakland is a city riddled with crime, including the area above Highway 580 which has had seven car thefts, 10 burglaries, two armed robberies and one assault since the first of the year.

It's no wonder many of the homes in the area have cameras pointed outside their doors.

Police are hoping one of those cameras might have caught something, but it won't bring back West Jr.

"I saw his body. I covered him up with a blanket and put a towel over the head wound and I saw him take his last breath. I prayed with him," Jinnie said.