Deadly violence on America's highways wreaks fear, havoc, and frustration

A sniper wounds five motorists on a Kentucky highway. In Colorado, a teenager kills a woman after hurling a rock through her windshield. A family drive through the Navajo Nation near New Mexico turns into a nightmare when a motorist inexplicably pursues the car, guns blazing.

The lure of the open road is a quintessentially American draw. But a drive can easily take a turn for the worse and outbursts of violence on the highway leave indelible images of slain motorists and destruction - and also undermine the feeling of safety on the 48,500 miles of interstate highways where American motorists drive the most, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics and state crime reports.

A USA TODAY review of data and news stories from around the nation shows that attacks on freeway drivers are not only on the rise in some heavy commuting areas, but that highway assaults are causing increased fear during everyday driving. Among the deadly incidents in the U.S. are heavily armed riflemen on the sides of highways, motorists looking to kill someone who cut them off in traffic, and young pranksters who fling melon-sized rocks at passing cars.

Federal data shows that in some states - including Washington and Texas - shootings on highways are up over 50 percent in the last five years. And in a handful of communities, police have expressed frustration in trying to thwart the crimes, which are difficult to trace because shooters often are unseen and flee well before police arrive.

“Road rage incidents resulting in death feel particularly symptomatic of a society that has lost connection with itself and each other because of the way in which a moment of frustration can turn so tragic so quick,” said U.S. Attorney for New Mexico Alexander M.M. Uballez. “Frequently people don't see the person in another car as another person (or) someone in their community because they are so overwhelmed by a moment of rage.”

The shooting in Laurel County, Kentucky, is the latest. Authorities on Wednesday said they believe they found the body of the suspected shooter, Joseph A. Couch. Local sheriff's office deputies responding to the scene Sept. 7 along Interstate 75 found cars riddled with bullet holes and windows shot out.

But the Kentucky assault, which drew shock and outrage across the nation for its brazenness, wasn't the only mass highway shooting in that particular week. Just five days earlier, on Labor Day evening in Washington state, a gunman left six people injured in "spasms of violence" across a stretch of the I-5 highway outside Seattle.

The shooter's motives for stalking and firing upon unsuspecting drivers from his white Volvo remain unknown. But he created a wave of terror on the highway as he hit as many as 10 cars and left two people critically wounded with gunshot wounds to the neck and chest, according to Washington State Patrol.

“This is not acceptable. People have the right to travel safely in this state and we are going to protect that right," said Washington State Patrol Chief John R. Batiste.

The numbers for road rage alone, just one segment of the highway violence problem, have risen exponentially. Using Gun Violence Archive’s database to analyze road rage incidents, Everytown Research & Policy found that the number of road rage injuries and deaths involving guns has increased every year since 2018. In that year, at least 70 road rage shooting deaths occurred in the United States; in 2022, the number doubled to 141, the study found.

'They just filled my car full of holes'

The panic and confusion are palpable in the 911 calls made by terrified drivers in Kentucky after this month's sniper assault.

“I just got shot at, officer,” says one flummoxed caller in a recording reviewed by the USA TODAY Network. 'They just filled my car full of holes.” 

The motorist describes the scene for the dispatcher, saying the gunman is “shooting everybody coming by” and that a woman hit in the car behind him is “gushing blood, bad.”

“Why did someone shoot us,” another caller yells in anguished bewilderment in a recording of the 911 calls obtained by the Louisville Courier-Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network. He says his wife was hit in the face; she can be heard screaming in pain.

The unpredictability and ferocity of the attacks is what makes highway violence so distinctly terrifying, experts say.

"These sorts of events whether they happen directly to a given driver or are simply present in the news media can shatter someone’s sense of safety," said Dr. Robert Brady, who runs the Anxiety Disorder Service at Dartmouth Health. "Many of the people in the surrounding area even after the threat is eliminated might still have a sense of vigilance when they're on the road and that vigilance makes total sense, they’re more alarmed, more on alert as they’re driving."

Shootings up 55% in Washington state

Washington state has seen some of the worst of the violence.

The number of shootings reported on Washington interstates increased over 55% from 2019 to 2023, going from 602 to 937, according to state patrol data shared by Director of Communications Chris Loftis. Reports of people brandishing guns on highways increased over 35%.

Around a quarter of the violence on highways is gang-related, Loftis said, but it also includes acts of road rage, random violence and other criminal activity such as robberies or domestic conflicts. 

Loftis attributed the number of shootings to an increasing number of guns in society and more people driving on the highway. “More cars means more potential for roadway conflict,” he said. “More guns means greater potential for that conflict to become deadly.”

The number of reported shootings in 2024 is on track to surpass last year. 2022 saw the most reported shootings with 1,058. 

Loftis lamented the patrol’s ability to prevent shootings.

“Freeway shooters were not born on the interstates,” he said. “They were not raised on our roadways. They were not educated on the pavement or socialized on the shoulders. Still, many of those stories end or their most violent moments play out on those surfaces.”

Highway shooting spree

The majority of the Washington shootings happen in King County on Interstate 5, between Seattle and Tacoma. Just days before the Kentucky shooting, nearly a dozen people - including a family with two small children - were shot at by a driver with unknown motives.

Eric Jerome Lee Sentell Perkins was charged with five counts of assault in the first degree for firing at other drivers at random on Sep. 2, according to court documents.The shootings happened over a matter of hours on a 25-mile stretch of interstate in two counties, Loftis said, adding the suspect shot and hit 9 or 10 vehicles and injured 6 people.USA TODAY reached one of the people named in the charging documents who asked not to be named because he was traumatized by the shooting and is concerned about his family’s safety. The man was riding home from dinner with his wife and two young children when bullets cracked into the car.They thought the first bullet, which hit the rear of the family’s white Lincoln Aviator, was a rock, said the father, adding it’s not uncommon for unhoused people in the area to throw stones at cars. Then, the second bullet hit, sending glass from the passenger side window into his wife’s eye.“It was just horrible,” the man said. “Thank God everything is fine but we’re dealing with the emotional scarring.”The couple told their 4-year-old son it was a ghost throwing rocks. The sheer randomness of the attack has left his wife afraid of riding on the highway - though it’s hard to avoid.“This isn’t like avoiding a bad neighborhood,” the man explained. “I can’t avoid the major freeway in Washington state.”

Perkins' attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The “spasm” of shootings is the state’s second spree in less than a year. State patrol arrested another driver suspected to be behind six shootings in a matter of hours last December, according to officials. 

Road rage leads to highway horror

Most instances of road rage are common enough that they take a backseat to national news coverage of the random violence like the shootings in Kentucky and Washington. But one of the most galvanizing instances of highway violence was the shooting of a 6-year-old boy on his way to kindergarten after the boy’s mother made a rude gesture at the man for cutting him off.

The killing of Aiden Leos by Marcus Eriz in Southern California sparked outrage. The local community pooled together around half a million dollars as a reward for information leading to an arrest and hundreds of tips poured in to find Eriz.

Leos' killing came amid a burdgeoning wave of road-rage fueled violence after the pandemic and Eriz said he carried the Glock 17 he fired because “people have been acting crazy around the freeway,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

A review of USA TODAY Network papers found incidents of road-rage violence happen almost every week:

• Dion Kimbrough was sentenced to 60 years in prison last week for the murder of Eli Hickerson, according to the IndyStar. Kimbrough shot and killed Hickerson on an Indiana highway in 2022 after the 30-year-old threw up his hands at Kimbrough’s reckless driving, according to witnesses.
• Shootings on Indiana highways have been on the rise for years due to road rage, according to Sergeant John Perrine of the Indiana State Police. There were 56 shootings on Indianapolis area interstates last year and 230 reports of guns being brandished; there have already been 54 shootings and 300 reports of guns being brandished in 2024.
• A fight that began in the drive-thru line for a Florida McDonald’s last week escalated and ended on the road with one driver shooting the other, who had a knife, dead, according to reporting by the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
• Ma' Aquil N. Littlejohn, 43, was convicted in Virginia last week of unlawful wounding and unlawful discharge of a firearm resulting in injury after pulling a gun on another driver last November, according to the Staunton News Leader.
• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data shows road rage leads to an ever-growing number of fatal crashes. Between 2019 and 2022, the number of deaths from crashes associated with road rage and aggressive driving has risen 47% to 742.

Rock-throwing spree

Firearms aren't the only weapons people are using to attack drivers. A Colorado teen turned a melon-sized rock into a deadly weapon when he hurtled it into oncoming traffic. 

Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, among other charges, in May for his part in a rock-throwing spree that killed a 20-year-old woman in suburban Denver. 

The teens, who were all 18 at the time, threw rocks at seven vehicles. Three other drivers were injured by rocks that night and 20-year-old Alexa Bartell was killed after a rock crashed through her windshield, according to police.

Four Michigan teenagers also pleaded guilty to various charges for throwing multiple rocks off of an overpass onto an interstate outside Flint that killed a man in 2017, according to reporting by the Detroit Free Press.

Highway shootings data

Highways along with alleys, streets and sidewalks are the second most likely place for violent crime to happen, after residences, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crime Data Explorer.

The number of violent crimes reported on highways, streets, sidewalks and in alleys nearly doubled from 105,000 crimes in 2019 and 135,000 in 2020 to 203,000 in 2022, according to the latest available FBI data. 

The trend was worse in some states. In Indiana, the number of violent crimes reported to the FBI on roadways rose nearly 83% between 2019 and 2022. The number of shootings on Texas roadways rose over 51%.

A family terrorized

It just takes one shooting to upend a roadway and have a lasting psychological impact on the people who travel it, said Ráchael A. Powers, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Cincinnati. She said the idea "that it can happen in your backyard can shake your faith."

Federal prosecutors say Rydell Happy and others with him created that terror on a highway passing through the Navajo Nation in April.

According to a criminal complaint filed in the District of New Mexico, Happy began menacing the family when they pulled over to stretch their legs. 

The grandparent of the family, who was driving, ushered their adult child and grandchildren back in the car and they continued down the road as the Happy crew followed them, speeding up to the point of ramming into the family's car. The driver’s adult child saw someone fire a gun at them from the SUV. Investigators found five bullet holes in the car, according to court filings. 

The family managed to pull off the highway and call police, who tracked down Happy on the highway. Police say they connected Happy, 30, to an unrelated murder committed the same day; federal prosecutors say the victim had been beaten with a baseball bat and thrown off a cliff. 

The family, who is not named in the lawsuit, could not be reached for the story. Happy's attorney declined to comment.