SAN FRANCISCO » Police are investigating whether the killing of a woman hit by a stray bullet as she stood outside her San Francisco home with her three children is connected to a shooting that left a man dead in the same neighborhood.

Maria Lourdes Soza was hit in the head by an errant bullet fired from one of two vehicles that sped by the family’s duplex in the Bayview neighborhood. The 32-year-old mother died later at a hospital.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports Soza had just arrived home from picking her children up from school. Witnesses say she pushed her youngest daughter out of harm’s way before being struck.

Police were investigating Wednesday whether Lourdes Soza’s death was linked to the arrival of a blood-soaked woman at a nearby restaurant minutes later.