A man riding alongside Manuel Martin 30, of Venice was wearing a T-shirt bearing the insignia of the Mongols motorcycle gang, Glendale police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said. Police did not know if Martin belonged to the Mongols, Lorenz said. The Montebello-based gang has several chapters in California and has recently been feuding with the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, authorities said. "We won't be able to make any determination as to whether he was a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang," he said. "We don't know if he was targeted. We don't know if this was a road-rage incident." The freeway was shut down from about 4 a.m. to 1 p.m. and traffic was jammed on side streets as homicide and coroner's investigators searched the scene. The traffic jam reached as far east as Arcadia and west through Glendale.
Martin was found in an embankment off the freeway near his motorcycle after a report of multiple shots being fired about 2 a.m., according to Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz. Coroners have not determined if he died from the bullet wound to his chest or from injuries sustained after falling from his motorcycle. Lorenz noted that the incident happened after most establishments close, and he said detectives are trying to determine where the two bikers were before getting on the freeway.
"This obviously started somewhere else and it culminated on the freeway while they were riding," he said. The feud between the Mongols and the Hells Angels, recently has erupted in violence. A series of pipe bombs exploded outside of the home of a leader of the San Jose chapter of the Mongols last month. Police suspect the attack, in which no one was injured, was the work of the Hells Angels. Also last month, the president of the San Francisco Hells Angels chapter, Mark "Papa" Guardado, 46, was shot and killed outside a San Francisco bar by a Mongol from Modesto.
Tim McKinley, an expert in biker gangs who retired from the FBI in 2002, said the feud has raged for over a decade.
"Its just game-on between the two groups and it has been for quite a while now," he said. "They're in a gang war." The war has continued over territorial issues and reached its most violent point in 2002 when a fight broke out in a casino that ended with the deaths of two Hells Angels and one Mongol.