Man slain on East Oakland street that has violent history

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One man was killed and a second was wounded when they were shot while driving on an East Oakland street where city officials have taken extraordinary steps to try to reduce violence, police said Wednesday.

The shooting happened on the 5900 block of Bromley Avenue shortly after 11 p.m. Tuesday. The victims were able to drive several blocks to the 1700 block of 65th Avenue, where one of the men, 21-year-old Ralph Quarels of Oakland, died.

The second victim was taken to a hospital and was expected to survive, police said. They did not release his name.

It's possible that more than one shooter took part in the attack, police said. No arrests have been made.

The 5900 block of Bromley, near Seminary Avenue, earned a reputation in past years as one of Oakland's most dangerous stretches of land, so perilous that even police were reluctant to venture onto it without being in large groups.

But violence dropped after several properties on the block were razed in 2009. Police and the city attorney's office, fed up with drug sales, shootings and homicides, put pressure on the owner of the buildings, who lost the properties in foreclosure proceedings. The bank that took them over agreed to relocate the residents and tear down the structures.

Until the homicide Tuesday, there had been no killings on the block in recent months. Police weren't sure what the victims were doing in the area and emphasized that they may have had no connection to the neighborhood.

The killing was the second in the city in two days.

About 12:15 a.m. Monday, 17-year-old Willie Gilbert of Oakland was brought to Highland Hospital after a passerby found him with a gunshot wound on a street. Gilbert, who was a student at Dewey Academy continuation high school in Oakland, died a short time later.

Later Monday morning, a 22-year-old man who had been shot in the leg drove himself to the hospital. The man told police he had been wounded on Interstate 580 near 14th Avenue. Investigators are trying to determine if he and Gilbert were shot during the same incident.