ATLANTA — A 20-year-old who recently moved to the metro area still has no idea how he and a friend became two of the latest victims of a surge in interstate shootings.
“Just a random shooting for no reason,” said 20-year-old Kiesen Arnold. “I didn’t know what to think, though. I think we were just really scared.”
Arnold says he just moved to the area a month ago and was picking up a friend last Wednesday night from the airport.
He was heading east on Interstate 20 near Boulevard at around 8:45 p.m. when he says someone in an orange Kia sedan started shooting into his car.
“The glass just shattered and I felt [it] going in my mouth and everything,” he said. “My friend was screaming, ‘I feel like I got shot.’”
One of the bullets hit his 19-year-old friend in the upper chest, but she is out the hospital and recovering.
Arnold says he kept his composure, got off the interstate and called police.
“Anything could have happened,” he said. “We could have wrecked and caused more people to be injured.”
As recently as Tuesday morning, less than a week later, another interstate shooting left a man with serious injuries.
At around 4:30 a.m., Atlanta police told Channel 2 Action News, someone shot into a man’s car near the 10th Street exit on the downtown connector.
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The victim drove all the way onto I-20 near Gresham Road until he crashed, and first responders took him to the hospital.
More than 30 interstate shootings have been reported across the metro area since January.
Investigators from multiple agencies have said road rage has been a factor in many of the shootings, and some of them have even been deadly.
The shooting from last week left Arnold’s car damaged, and he is trying to raise money on a GoFundMe site. If you’d like to donate to them, click here.
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