Murder charges against Oakland man who allegedly randomly shot woman driving past his home
OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- In a pre-recorded video, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced murder charges against an Oakland man.
He's accused of killing a 21-year-old woman with an assault rifle as she was driving by his house.
He was angry, prosecutors say, about noisy cars racing by his home, so he started shooting at random.
"There are too many guns in this community, and too many people too quick to use a gun," Price said.
Similar incidents have made national headlines recently - people being shot for seemingly no reason.
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Mental health experts believe it's due to a combination of factors.
"They probably don't have support of family, friends, community, to be able to express when they get angry, to be able to process when they get upset," Dr. Andrea Zorbas said. "So instead what happens is it builds and builds and then people, for lack of a better word, they snap."
Experts call it the frustration-aggression hypothesis - a theory that says aggression is the result of something blocking a person's ability to reach their goal.
"We really do have a mental health tsunami going on out there with anxiety, depression, suicidality, homicidality, substance abuse. The data is striking," Dr. Thomas Plante said.
Plante teaches at Santa Clara University.
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Research, he says, shows these days, people are much quicker to have an extreme reaction.
"When you have frustration, stress, aggression, and you've got a firearm right there, you've got a big problem," Plante said.
A problem that may only be getting worse.
"The predictors of these incidents don't seem to be diminishing, they seem to be increasing," Plante said.
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