A teenage driver was shot and killed Thursday night as he drove a van full of his friends around West Valley City.
The 15-year-old boy, Irving Alexis Chuba, was driving south on Bangerter Highway at about 9:45 p.m., when he and his friends were “confronted” by another group traveling in a vehicle near 3500 South, a news release from West Valley City police said.
Chuba indicated to his friends — all of whom are also in their mid-teens — that he knew one or more of the occupants in the other vehicle, and he began an attempt to lose them, police said Friday.
The other vehicle’s driver pursued Chuba’s van “at high speeds, running several red lights and weaving in and out of traffic in the area of 3500 South Bangerter Highway and 3100 South west of Bangerter,” the release says.
The van was forced to slow down on southbound Bangerter, due to traffic at the intersection of 4100 South, police said, and the other vehicle’s driver pulled alongside Chuba.
A shooter from the vehicle fired multiple shots and struck Chuba with at least one bullet, police say. The van then turned west onto 4100 South in an eastbound lane, and collided with another vehicle at Hawkeye Drive (about 3850 West).
No other passengers suffered serious injuries, police said, but a dog inside the van, believed to be a Chihuahua, also had been shot and died at the scene.
The suspect vehicle is described as a silver or gold Mitsubishi, or a similar vehicle. Witnesses told police that there had been three or four people in the vehicle and were described as mid-to-late teens who are possibly Latino.
Anyone with information about the case or who may have witnessed reckless driving involving a blue minivan and a silver or gold passenger car in the area Thursday night is asked to call 801-840-4000.
Chuba’s family has asked for privacy, police said.
