Road Rage Shooting

There was a shooting in Columbus, OH - 

Peanut Gallery: No!

Mad Jack: Yes! And I'm told that oriental massage parlors give more than massages, and Texas has a whore house in it. Now then...

Shooting in Columbus, Ohio on I-70 West. Police are searching for the alleged shootist, which is a joke. What the news media doesn't say is that if the assailant in question keeps his yap shut, the cops have little hope in finding him, and even less hope in getting him charged, tried, and convicted. Then, of course, sentenced to twenty to life because it's a gun crime and the alleged perpetrator is an over thirty white male.

Keep reading to get the particulars and my own diatribe about this one.

The deal is that I-70 runs East-West through Columbus. Dayton, OH is West of us, and Pittsburgh, PA is East. So every mother trucker that has a milk run from Dayton to Wheeling, WV or points East uses I-70. Then we've got I-71 which runs North-South through the middle of Columbus, and US-23 which used to be the big deal highway for North-South traffic but now has stoplights, heavy traffic, and potholes. Then, just to keep life interesting for those of us who are easily bored, we have the beltway. I-270 runs around Columbus as a divided highway, and actually has five lanes in some places, like where Route 315, US-23, or I-71 merges with I-270 and all those people getting on and off try their best to switch lanes with other people, all of whom truly believe the term Yield means cut the other guy off before he can suck up space that belongs to you.

My point is that these highways are crowded, and at least one quarter of the drivers on the highway have no real business being there.

My other point is that driving is a form of standing in line, and everyone who has experienced a public school lunch line knows that standing in line is a royal pain in the fundament. We, citizens of the U.S., do not do well at standing in line.

Now then, if you believe the local cat box liner, around 7:05 AM today, tax day, April 15^th, 2025, right in the middle of rush hour on I 70-W, the drivers of two vehicles got into a road rage scenario. One got shot by the other. Here's a link to the article: Police Investigating Possible Road Rage Incident after Driver Shot on I-70 West in Columbus 

From the article:

A dispatcher with the city’s public safety department told 10TV that the shooting happened on I-70 West near Broad Street around 7:05 a.m.

Another caller told the dispatch center that the two vehicles were brake-checking each other before the shooting.

Emphasis mine. One vehicle is a pickup truck, maybe a Ford 150, the other is a Chevrolet Equinox. The shooter is in the Equinox.

No one is going to say this, and many people won't agree with it, but maybe the driver of the pickup had it coming. He's got a larger vehicle and decides to act like an asshole. The guy in the Chevy decides he's had enough and fires a shot. Given that there were no fatalities and no serious wounds, if I were a cop my personal inclination would be to take a coffee break then see if I could find anything. If I couldn't, I'd stop looking and tell the wounded idiot not to do stupid stuff on the highway. I'd make an announcement on TV and warn the shooter that we won't stop looking, and again, don't do stupid stuff like brake checking on the highway.

Me, I have a prejudice against tailgaters. I don't do it, and I don't tolerate it well when it's done to me. I also don't like being run off the road by semi trucks, which has happened a few times. On one occasion the semi driver ran me off the highway onto the berm, and he'd done it deliberately. Where are the cops when you need them?

Until the police start issuing tickets for bad driving, problems like this will get worse.