Five men shot and wounded at East Oakland house party

OAKLAND, Calif. - Five men were shot and wounded at a house party in East Oakland, authorities said.

The men were shot on the 5100 block of Ygnacio Avenue at about 9:20 p.m. Sunday.

ShotSpotter, the city's gunfire-detection system, reported eight or nine rounds.

All of the victims are Oakland residents.   

One victim was reported to be in critical condition.

Witnesses told police the shooter fired from a car carrying several other people.

"We don't have fixed motive yet," said Guillermo Cespedes, chief of Oakland's Department of Violence Prevention. "We're still working with getting information from the Oakland Police Department."

Cespedes' department assists crime victims and their families with getting social services. It also seeks to prevent violence by intervening at the community level before simmering tensions escalate into violence.

But speaking generally, Cespedes said that can be difficult at times.

"It is really challenging, because it really means being embedded in every nook and cranny of every neighborhood in Oakland," Cespedes said.

The shooting comes as Oakland is seeing a significant jump in homicides, shootings and carjackings this year.

As of last week, ShotSpotter activations were up 119 percent compared to the same time last year. 

"Sometimes the sad part of my job is that when we prevent something, you don't hear about it. You only hear when we did not prevent something. And this was a horrendous incident," Cespedes said.

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