Two people were killed and several others were injured as a man drove around Banning on Saturday, shooting seemingly at random from a white SUV, police say.

A suspect was taken into custody in the neighboring city of Beaumont less than an hour after the shooting began.

Just before his arrest, the suspect was knocking on doors in a Beaumont neighborhood, asking if anyone had seen his children, police said.

“We don’t know what his state of mind was. We don’t know what his motive was,” Banning Police Chief Alex Diaz said at a news conference Saturday evening.

The suspect and victims’ names were not released.

UPDATE: Suspect identified; jailed without bail

“It seems like it’s random,” Diaz said. “There’s no (known) correlation between the victims and the suspect at this point.”

The first shooting was reported at 11:36 a.m. in the 700 block of John Street, near Hargrave Street. A man was found dead inside a red car. A passenger also was injured and was taken to the hospital, Diaz said.

The passenger described the shooter as a Hispanic man in a blue T-shirt and sunglasses, driving a white SUV, Diaz said.

Next, someone matching that description shot at a car at 11:43 a.m. at San Gorgonio Avenue and Nicolet Street, about a mile west and north of the first scene. A victim was injured by glass fragments but wasn’t hit by gunfire, Diaz said.

At 11:53 a.m., a man by the same description assaulted a man in the parking lot at a convenience market at 22nd and Ramsey streets, 2 1/2 miles west. The incident was caught on surveillance video.

The assailant came up to the victim’s car window and punched him multiple times in the face, Diaz said. The victim also was hit by some kind of hard object, but Diaz said police did not immediately have specifics on the weapon.

The victim was released from the hospital and questioned at the Banning police station wearing a bandage around the top of his head.

At 12:13 p.m., a passer-by saw a truck that had crashed in the 200 block of East Lincoln Street, near San Gorgonio Avenue and just north of Banning High School. A man was dead inside the vehicle.

Initially, police were not confident the crash was linked to the shootings. But by late Saturday, Diaz confirmed that the victim had “injuries consistent with gunshot wounds.”

ARREST IN BEAUMONT

Beaumont Police Chief Sean Thuilliez said his department, which had been notified of the shooting, started getting reports at 12:22 p.m. of a man knocking on doors in the area of American Avenue and Eighth Street and asking if people had seen his kids.

He tried to enter one vehicle occupied by a driver and small children, and asked if his children were still in the vehicle, Thuilliez said.

Beaumont police pulled him over in the white SUV. The suspect exited the car and was handcuffed without any incident, Thuilliez said.

Because of his talk about his children, police checked on the suspect’s family and found them to be unharmed, Diaz said.

He did not say what city the suspect is from, but he is not a Banning resident.

“We have very little information on him right now,” Diaz said at the news conference.

Police had not questioned him at that point, as they waited for district attorney’s officials to arrive.

VICTIM ‘CHARMING, HOSPITABLE’

The shooting on John Street that killed one man and injured another was just west of Hargrave Street and south of I-10, across from a double set of railroad tracks that parallel the freeway.

The victim who died had just picked up the other man on Plaza Street, a block south of John Street, to take him to work at a home-remodeling job, neighbors said.

Dolores Privett said the victim had been the best man at her wedding. She identified him as Paul “Joey” Lesh, 66.

“He was a charming, hospitable guy. He knew how to talk to people and people really like him,” she said.

Detectives and forensic investigators worked into the early evening at the site, where the red car was shielded from onlookers by a yellow plastic sheet. John Street was closed off.

Neighbor Martha Rocha said she might have heard some popping sounds but wasn’t sure what it was.

“I thought probably a backfire or something else, so I don’t really pay attention to it that much,” she said.

She recognized a red car near the shooting as belonging to a neighbor – the injured victim. She said police told her he was taken to the hospital and might have been shot in the face.

GUNFIRE AND A CRASH

At the scene of the Lincoln street shooting and crash, police taped off a blocklong stretch of the road Saturday afternoon.

A small white pickup crashed into a concrete block wall in the parking lot of a business across the street from AM Maintenance.

Co-owner Holly Chafey was in the office doing paperwork Saturday when she was startled by what she described as two or three shots.

“I heard gunfire, a car screeching, and now that I think about it, a crash,” Chafey said as she walked with her dog Angel, an aging German shepherd, toward the yellow police tape.

Janet Kloos was walking home with groceries when she had to cut through a parking lot to get around the scene of the nonfatal shooting at Nicolet Street and San Gorgonio Avenue.

She said the mayhem did not shake her confidence in the Banning community.

“I don’t feel so concerned,” she said. “I am sure law enforcement will handle everything. They have done a good job. It is probably just an isolated incident.”