A 45-year-old Austin man has been sentenced to 45 years in prison after pointing a pistol at another driver during a road-rage confrontation on Interstate 35 and then leading New Braunfels police on a chase that ended with his car in a ditch. Patrick Ryan McShan was convicted on multiple felony counts stemming from the August 2025 incident, which unfolded near the San Marcos outlets before spilling into southwest New Braunfels.
A Cutoff, a Swerve, and a Gun
According to the San Antonio Express-News, the confrontation began on August 14, 2025, when McShan got into a dispute with another driver while heading south on I-35 near the San Marcos outlets, per the Comal County District Attorney’s Office. The outlet reports that McShan cut off the other driver, swerved toward that driver’s car, and then pointed a pistol at them — the kind of escalation that turns an ordinary highway irritation into a felony case.
New Braunfels police began chasing McShan after the confrontation, and he tried to outrun them, the Express-News report indicates. The pursuit ended badly for McShan: he drove through a convenience store parking lot, lost control of his vehicle, struck a fire hydrant, and ultimately crashed into a ditch. The attempted traffic stop was near I-35 and FM 482 in southwest New Braunfels, per the same account.
Drugs and a Gun Found in the Car
When officers searched McShan’s vehicle, they found a pistol, while McShan had methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia in a bag he was carrying, the report states. McShan was already on parole at the time for prior convictions involving theft of livestock and unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, according to the Express-News account of the case.
McShan was ultimately convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, evading arrest or detention with a vehicle, and possession with intent to deliver between four and 200 grams of a controlled substance. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison, the outlet reports, citing the Comal County District Attorney’s Office.
Part of a Broader Pattern on Texas Roads
McShan’s case lands amid high levels of gun-involved road-rage violence in Texas. The Trace found that Texas recorded 741 road-rage incidents involving guns from 2014 through 2023, and someone was shot in 72 percent of those encounters. Those shootings killed 146 people and wounded more than 430 over that decade-long span, per the same analysis, with Houston logging the most road-rage shootings of any city in the nation.
Federal prosecutors elsewhere have pursued similarly aggressive sentences in road-rage gun cases involving felons. In Oklahoma, a federal judge sentenced a man named Flores to 92 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release after a road-rage shooting, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
