A 46-year-old man is in custody after St. Clair County deputies say he shot at another motorist's car on I-94 near Wadhams Road, an act of gunfire that briefly shut down the freeway and was ultimately traced back to him through another motorist's dashboard camera. Nobody was hurt, and the shooting is one of several Michigan road rage cases involving gunfire this year.
Deputies Got the Call Just Before 4 P.M.
According to CBS News Detroit, St. Clair County Sheriff's deputies received a report of shots fired at a motorist's vehicle after the driver contacted Central Dispatch at 3:50 p.m. Wednesday, saying his car had been shot while traveling eastbound on I-94 in St. Clair Township, near Wadhams Road. Deputies were dispatched to the scene and temporarily closed the freeway to collect evidence, per the same report from CBS News Detroit.
The break in the case came from an unexpected source: another motorist driving nearby had captured the confrontation on their own dash camera and handed the footage over to investigators. The station's report notes that the video gave deputies a clear look at the suspect vehicle's license plate, which detectives then used to identify the registered owner. Detectives went to that owner's home and made an arrest, taking the 46-year-old man into custody Wednesday, according to the same source. No injuries were reported in the shooting.
Other Michigan Road Rage Cases
The I-94 shooting comes amid other confrontations on Michigan roadways. A driver in Dearborn fired shots at another vehicle during a road rage incident that escalated to gunfire, according to The Detroit News. That same report notes that two Florida men were charged in connection with a separate road rage incident in Bloomfield Township, and that a Pontiac woman is scheduled to stand trial after authorities accused her of breaking a man's leg by hitting him with her car during a road rage encounter on Interstate 75.
Just over a week before the I-94 arrest, a 46-year-old Detroit man was arrested following a Michigan State Police investigation into a road-rage shooting on the Southfield Freeway, according to ClickOnDetroit. In that case, the victim suffered minor injuries from glass and bullet fragments during the late-August shooting.
Michigan Highway Confrontations
Not every Michigan road rage case this year has ended without injury. In Garden City, a shooting and crash tied to a road rage dispute left an innocent bystander dead. According to FOX 2 Detroit, Diana Oldenburg was stopped at a red light at Middlebelt and Maplewood just before 6:30 p.m. on May 19 when she was hit by a vehicle; she was taken to a hospital, where she died.
In May, Michigan State Police investigated a road rage shooting in Milan Township after a man allegedly fired at a family from behind the wheel of a semitractor-trailer on northbound U.S.-23. The Detroit News reports that the suspect shot in the direction of a 53-year-old Clinton Township man and five relatives who were traveling in a 2012 Hyundai. The Detroit News says Monroe County Central Dispatch received the call at about 7:42 p.m. on May 30. A 33-year-old Clinton Township man who had been driving a 2019 Peterbilt semitractor-trailer was taken into custody and held in the Monroe County Jail, per The Detroit News.
Taken together, the cases document gunfire on Michigan highways this year, from the Southfield Freeway to U.S.-23 to the stretch of I-94 near Wadhams Road where deputies say a dash-cam recording by a third-party motorist helped identify a suspect after the shooting.
