Road Rage Leads to Deadly Shootout

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journal

Last week the Republican spokesperson for the Florida State Board of Administration was killed last as a result of a road rage incident that ended in a shootout.

The deadly drama began in Florida's capital city of Tallahassee when the GOP official, driving a BMW, sideswiped a Prius in on-coming traffic.  Both drivers pulled into a Circle K convenience store and the driver of the Prius got out of his car and berated the other driver before going back to his own car to await the arrival of police.  After the driver returned to his car, the other driver, the one who had caused the accident to begin with, apparently became angry.  He started his BMW and intentionally crashed it into the driver's side door of the Prius, pushing it around the parking lot.  

Next the angry driver in the attacking BMW pulled a gun and fired a shot at the other driver - and the other driver responded by pulling his own gun and firing back.  The BMW driver, the Republican official who had started the whole encounter, was killed.  The Prius driver managed to climb across the seat of his car to escape through the undamaged passenger door, and then hid because he did not know if the obviously deranged BMW driver would continue shooting or not.

That's quite a tale - almost enough for a movie of the week by itself.  But there is more.

The BMW driver, the one who caused the accident - and then intentionally crashed his BMW into the Prius - and who fired the first shot - and who subsequently died as a direct result of his uncontrolled anger - that driver had been the aggressor in a road rage incident in 2014.  He had pleaded "no contest" to pointing a gun (with a laser site) at a fellow motorist after the man had supposedly cut him off in traffic.   The offending driver (the GOP official) had been given a sentence of probation after that incident.  And - get this - the most recent road rage incident, the one that got the guy killed, occurred at the very same intersection where the one in 2014 had happened!

If all of that gunplay and irony falls short of the threshold for a good movie of the week, here's a little intrigue to add to the mix.  The widow of the angry man, the one who got himself killed, now says that she believes her husband was assassinated!

Road rage, and guns, and assassins, oh my!