A man was shot and killed just after noon Sunday in the parking lot of a San Pablo Avenue shopping center in El Cerrito — the small Contra Costa city's first homicide in three years — and two days on, the only image investigators have made public is of the suspects' getaway car.

The killing at Del Norte Plaza, 11299 San Pablo Ave., stands out less for the circumstances police have described — a parking-lot confrontation that turned fatal — than for where and when it happened: a busy retail strip on a Sunday afternoon, in a city that El Cerrito police say sees roughly one homicide a year and had gone three without one. The two suspects remain at large, the victim has not been publicly named, and the department's public appeal so far rests almost entirely on a single photograph of a sedan the Bay City News wire identified as gray.

The 911 call came in just after 12:15 p.m. Sunday, and officers reached the Del Norte Plaza shopping center at 11299 San Pablo Ave. to find a young man down with gunshot wounds outside the Los Moles restaurant, KTVU reported (external source, opens in a new tab) from an El Cerrito Police Department statement. He was pronounced dead there. His name is being withheld until relatives are notified.

By the department's account, the violence grew out of a face-to-face encounter: witnesses told police the two men got into a dispute with the victim beside his car before one of them opened fire. The response drew mutual aid, with officers from the neighboring Kensington and Richmond departments also turning out, ABC7 reported (external source, opens in a new tab) in an account carried by Bay City News.

The pair drove off southbound on South 56th Street, and by Sunday night investigators had circulated a single image of their vehicle — which the Bay City News account (external source, opens in a new tab) identified as a Nissan Maxima, gray, from the 2016 model year or later. The two were described only as young, one wearing a mask and a dark North Face-brand puffer, the other in a hat and a Nike-brand jacket.

That is very nearly the whole of the public record. There is no released name for the victim, no stated motive, no word on whether the men were strangers to one another, and no image of the suspects themselves — only the car. Tipsters were directed to call the department at 510-237-3233.

What the police statement glided past is the part that makes the case notable. ABC7, citing Bay City News, reported this was El Cerrito's first homicide in three years. The claim fits the city's own history: a Contra Costa community of about 25,000, El Cerrito records on the order of one killing a year, according to crime figures the police department has published (external source, opens in a new tab). Homicides here are the exception, and they land differently than they do in larger East Bay cities where a single shooting barely registers.

Geography sharpens the point. Del Norte Plaza fronts the San Pablo Avenue commercial corridor a short walk from the El Cerrito del Norte BART station — a run of shops and restaurants that on a Sunday afternoon is one of the most trafficked public spaces in town. A midday killing there, with two armed men vanishing into the surrounding residential grid, is exactly the kind of event that rattles a place unused to it, and it raises the stakes on how much police tell the public, and how fast.

So far, the answer is: a photo of a car, two thin wardrobe descriptions, and a tip line. Whether that reflects the limits of what investigators have, or a decision to hold detail back while the trail is warm, the department has not said. The Dissent left a message with the El Cerrito Police Department seeking more on the investigation and the victim's identity; this story will be updated.