SAN ANTONIO – Two men are dead and three others are in the hospital with gunshot wounds after they were ambushed by someone who had by lying in wait, according to San Antonio police.

The shooting happened around 12 a.m. Tuesday on Sherman Street, just off Walters Avenue.

"The person that shot at them was on foot, had come out from this culvert, this ditch behind me," said Sgt. Jesse Salame, a spokesman for SAPD. "When he appeared on foot, he opened fire on the vehicle."

Police said they found all five men, who are in their 20s, inside a white car that had crashed into a minivan parked at the curb.

According to one officer at the scene, members of SAPD's street crimes unit happened to be in the area at the time and heard the shots fired. They rushed over and found one man dead inside the vehicle. A second one died at a hospital.

At least two of the other men suffered serious wounds.

Shortly before the officers heard those gunshots, police had responded to another shooting in the 2000 block of Lamar Street.

Salame said in that case, investigators found evidence of a shootout. He said a car and home had been hit by gunfire.

Witnesses told investigators that some of those shots were fired by five people in a white car, Salame said.

Police would not say right away whether the two incidents were connected, or whether the five people who were shot were in fact, involved in the earlier shooting.

An officer at the scene said police did find weapons inside the car of the men who were wounded.