Trial opens in 2023 Highway 1 road rage shooting

SANTA CRUZ — Attorneys laid out their trial strategies Friday for a 2023 road rage case that left a Scotts Valley father and his toddler son injured in a Highway 1 shooting.

“At the end of this trial, it will be abundantly clear that the defendant, Mr. Abduh-Salam, was upset with Sergio’s driving, pulled in front of him on the off-ramp, blocked their car and fired round after round after round into that car,” Santa Cruz County Assistant District Attorney Michael McKinney said, summarizing evidence he planned to introduce to the jury next week.

McKinney described driver Sergio Del Angel Moreno attempting to hide from the barrage while trying to shield his 3-year-old and 8-month-old sons from the barrage of at least 15 gunshots issuing from the driver’s side of an SUV stopped perpendicular to him. Moreno was struck by two bullets plus additional graze injuries, while his older son received cuts to his face and a wound to his arm, McKinney said. Both family members were treated and released from the hospital within 24 hours, law enforcement officials said. Moreno’s wife and grandmother also were in the car at the time of the shooting, McKinney said.

McKinney played vehicle dashcam footage from a witness, where the apparent sound of repeated gunshots is audible, along with the driver’s expletive, before a vehicle is visible quickly driving away from the scene.

Raphael Abduh-Salam, 33, was arrested some seven months after the May 26, 2023, shooting took place around 8:40 p.m. on the Freedom Boulevard exit off Highway 1. He faces charges of three counts of attempted murder, shooting at an occupied vehicle, two counts of assault with a semiautomatic weapon, being a felon in possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition and numerous enhancements.

According to initial information provided by the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, Abduh-Salam, driving an Acura MDX SUV, is alleged to repeatedly have fired into the front windshield of a black Lexus SUV, after driving erratically on the highway that ultimately led to a fender bender between the two men.

Defense attorney Manuel Nieto said the jury is to hear evidence of a Highway 1 shooting that left people injured.

“You’re not going to hear direct evidence as to who the shooter is,” Nieto said. “But you are going to hear a lot of circumstantial evidence.”

Witnesses described the shooter as either a Black man with long hair, a person of unknown race or a white man, Nieto said. Abduh-Salam, a Black man with long braids piled in a bun Friday, unwaveringly watched jurors from the defense table throughout his attorney’s opening statements. Attorneys discussed other evidence likely to be testified to during the trial, including investigators locating a gun at Abduh-Salam’s girlfriend’s apartment that fired the same caliber ammunition as shell casings found after the shooting, Abduh-Salam’s alleged DNA on the casings and red and clear plastic fragments said to match damaged tail light covers on the Acura MDX Abduh-Salam was driving when arrested.

McKinney described additional instances of road rage, one in 2013 in Sacramento, a shooting in Antioch and another Bay Area confrontation several days before the Santa Cruz County shooting, that he said Abduh-Salam was behind.

Nieto said the prosecution would be unable to prove when DNA found on the shell casings was put there. He added that the recovered DNA belonged to multiple people, none of which may have been the actual shooter. Nieto asked the jury not to “jump to conclusions” in the case.

The trial is set to resume at 1:30 p.m. Monday.