The Bay Area once again saw the chaos that can unfold when drivers go wild and spectators cheer them on, with two major sideshows on Sunday.
Cars drove in doughnuts and fireworks exploded overhead as more than 150 vehicles took over the Bay Bridge for a sideshow in the early hours of Sunday.Twenty-five miles north, in Vallejo, multiple sideshows drew hundreds of spectators as a car was set on fire, authorities said.
These latest incidents followed three others last week: In Oakland on Wednesday, 15 people were injured in a shooting when a fight broke out at a sideshow near Lake Merritt in what may be the largest mass shooting in the city’s history. On June 15, a San Jose sideshow resulted in a vehicle striking a spectator, attendees attacking the car of a responding officer and two arrests. The same day in Redwood City, a sideshow drew hundreds of viewers and resulted in two arrests.
On the Bay Bridge, the gathering completely blocked eastbound lanes just before 2 a.m. Sunday, the San Francisco division of the California Highway Patrol said in a statement. CHP officers from San Francisco, Oakland and other local divisions responded to the sideshow, which was just east of Treasure Island.
Officers estimated the gathering as having more than 150 vehicles and noted that people in the crowd were setting off illegal fireworks, which appeared to shoot high into the air on videos posted to social media.
The response to the sideshow was hampered by heavy traffic and stopped cars, which “slowed the officers’ ability to arrive at the incident in an expedient manner,” according to the CHP statement. A CHP helicopter also responded to the incident but was met with laser beams from the crowd below, officials said.
The sideshow attendees began to disperse around 2:21 a.m., and CHP made several enforcement stops as vehicles exited the east side of the bridge, officials said. One attempted stop resulted in a vehicle pursuit that ended with officers deploying spike strips to forcibly stop the car. The vehicle’s occupants were taken into custody.
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Officers also arrested a suspect in a hit and run that evolved from the sideshow and towed an abandoned vehicle they determined to have been part of the sideshow, CHP added.
Authorities said they would continue to investigate the sideshow and take “appropriate enforcement actions” against people and vehicles involved, according to the release.
Police were too understaffed to respond to a sideshow in Vallejo in the early hours of Sunday, when four people were shot around the same time, according to television station KTVU.
