California law enforcement authorities have identified the vehicle linked to the fatal shooting of a 6-year-old boy in a road rage attack earlier this month.
The California Highway Patrol posted a photo of the car on Twitter, asking for the public’s help locating the vehicle and the owner. The reward for information leading to the arrest of the shooter is now up to $325,000.
Aiden Leos, 6, died shortly after the incident on May 21. His mother, Joanna Cloonan, was driving him to school on the 55 Freeway in the city of Orange. When she tried to exit from the carpool lane, a white Volkswagen Golf SportWagen driven by a woman cut off Cloonan, police said. A man in the passenger seat of the Volkswagen fired at Cloonan’s car.
After Aiden, who was sitting in the backseat, said, “Mommy, my tummy hurts,” Cloonan pulled over to the side of the road to check on him.
“She picked him up and he was bleeding on her, she had blood on her clothes,” Aiden’s sister, Alexis Cloonan, said at a press conference the next day. “He started turning blue, and that’s when the ambulance took him. That’s the last time my mom saw him alive.”
Aiden was declared dead at a local hospital.
“He meant the world to me, and it feels like my life is over,” Cloonan said on “Good Morning America” days later. “That was my baby. I’ve never, never thought pain like this could exist.”
The shooter’s car sped off as Cloonan pulled over to attend to her injured son.
“We will do everything in our power to seek justice,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said at a news conference on Thursday. “The natural order of a parent — and I’m a parent, too — is not to have your child predecease you.”