Berkeley police are investigating after finding a 21-year-old gunshot victim clinging to life on Idaho Street on April 9, 2026. Credit: Kelly Sullivan
Gunfire in Southwest Berkeley hospitalized a young man last Thursday, the first instance of injury by gunshot in the city in nearly a year.
A 911 caller first reported gunfire in the 3200 block of Idaho Street shortly before 11 p.m. April 9, police spokesperson Officer Byron White said in an email.
When officers arrived, they found the man, “wounded by gunfire,” inside a parked car. Emergency responders took him to Highland Hospital where he was last known to be in critical but stable condition, White said. The shooting is under investigation.
The last time a person was struck with bullets in Berkeley was April 12, 2025, when police shot 34-year-old Ricardo Ruiz after a prolonged downtown standoff during which police said Ruiz fired on them with a compressed air rifle. It was the only time last year that someone was hit with gunfire; the last gunshot wound in the city before it was Oct. 24, 2024. The most recent fatal shooting in Berkeley was two months before that on Aug. 25, 2024, one of three that year alone.
Police emphasized progress on gun violence in their annual report, delivered in March. In part, the decline in shootings has mirrored a nationwide trend; in part, police credited the work of Live Free USA, an East-Bay based nonprofit leading Berkeley’s gun violence prevention and intervention program.
Gun-related arrests in Berkeley actually increased in 2025 by nearly a third over 2024, according to Berkeley Police Department data. Gun seizures also ticked up slightly over the same timeframe.
BPD’s transparency hub displays just two instances of gunfire so far in 2025, both from January, though the Berkeley Scanner has tracked four total shooting incidents that BPD have investigated this year, including the April 9 one, which the Scanner was the first to report. Additionally, University of California police have investigated another two incidents where shots were fired this year in or near Berkeley, according to the Scanner.
One of the January shootings resulted in attempted murder and gun charges against an Oakland woman and burglary and other charges against her alleged accomplice. Police said in court documents that the pair had gotten into a fight with two other women in San Francisco and followed them back to the Maudelle Miller Shirek Community apartments on Adeline Street, where one of the other women lived and where the shooting took place, injuring nobody.
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