Petaluma couple wounded in bizarre highway shooting in Sierra foothills

A Petaluma couple camping in Gold Country near Downieville were shot and wounded in a nighttime shooting on the highway with an unknown shooter still at large.|

A Petaluma couple camping in the Sierra foothills were wounded in a bizarre highway shooting when a single bullet, apparently coming out of nowhere, struck the driver in her jaw and grazed her boyfriend’s lip, Yuba County sheriff’s officials said Friday.

The unknown shooter remains at large, one month after the June 23 shooting on darkened Highway 49, and investigators have no other witnesses, evidence or other clues pointing to a suspect, Yuba County sheriff’s spokeswoman Leslie Carbah said Friday.

Detectives also haven’t determined whether the bullet came from someone in a passing vehicle or from another location, she said.

“No suspects were seen. There were no other witnesses,” Carbah said. “They weren’t even certain it had come from the other vehicle.”

The woman’s injuries required surgery, but she was home recovering, Carbah said. The boyfriend was treated for a superficial wound.

The couple, a 27-year-old woman and her 30-year-old boyfriend, both Petaluma residents, had left their campground near Downieville in the Tahoe National Forest to get ice in a small community called North San Juan, Carbah said.

They were on their way back to their campsite shortly before 10 p.m. when the shooting occurred somewhere on the highway between Oregon Creek Day Use Area and Camptonville. The shooting occurred in a remote portion of the highway traveling through dense forests between small mountain towns.

The couple told deputies they didn’t have any connections to the area and were visiting.

About 9:50 p.m., the boyfriend called 911, telling dispatchers “he and his girlfriend were shot” from a bullet that “came from the side of the roadway,” according to the Nevada County sheriff’s office incident log.

The shooting occurred in Yuba County near the Nevada County border, and the two county sheriff’s departments responded to the call.

Saying his girlfriend was having trouble breathing, the man said the shot may have come from a truck that passed them in the opposite direction, according to the log. He got behind the wheel and they turned back, heading several miles away from the area of the shooting and meeting paramedics at a restaurant parking lot.

The woman was taken by medical helicopter to a Sacramento hospital.

Carbah said they were treating the shooting as a felony assault with a deadly weapon investigation, although it is possible the shooting was accidental. They don’t yet know, she said.

“It’s unfortunate, we’re coming up against some dead ends,” Carbah said.

The couple’s names weren’t released because the shooter remains at large, she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.

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