Rising number of road rage shootings in metro Atlanta leaves drivers wary of interstates

ATLANTA — The combination of road rage shootings and gun violence could have killed at least two people in metro Atlanta on Tuesday.

One man Channel 2′s Matt Johnson spoke with said he was driving home on Interstate 20 eastbound near Wesley Chapel Boulevard Tuesday afternoon when shots rang out.

He said another driver wanted him to drive faster.

“I moved to the left over to the shoulder to get away from him. And that’s when he rolled down his window, stuck his head out and pointed this pistol at me,” the driver who did not want to be identified said.

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This happened the same day that Atlanta police arrested someone for another road rage shooting on Metropolitan Pkwy. Police said a man got into an argument with another driver who then started shooting and hit the man’s wife in the back while she was in the car with their kids.

Surveillance cameras at the gas station where the shooting happened helped police catch the shooter, who has not been identified.

In another road rage shooting, Larry Brown Jr. said his daughter, 21-year-old Shekevious Young, was leaving work last June when DeKalb County police say someone shot into her car and killed her on I-285.

The possibility that road rage led to her death is just as painful for Brown as knowing that there were no cameras on the interstate to catch his daughter’s killer.

“That’s a tough pill to swallow, to have someone you love taken away from you in a brutal fashion. And nobody ever is held accountable for it,” he told Johnson.

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In just the first month of 2022 in the city of Atlanta alone, police are investigating four interstate shootings.

Last year, police reported at least 30 shootings across metro interstates. Many of those have been blamed on road rage.

“It brings a lot of memories back that nothing has been done,” mother Artilla Lewis said.

Lewis’ son Marquies Flores would have been 25 on Wednesday. Instead, his mother is mourning him as another victim of road rage violence from last year.

Flores and a friend both died on I-285 in College Park, and his mother worries about more violence with his son’s killer still out there.

“The way they just just took lives for no reason. Innocent, innocent men,” she told Johnson.

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Johnson looked into why police are not able to get more surveillance video from shooting along the interstate.

He learned that many of these shootings take place near gas stations with plenty of surveillance cameras, but while there are cameras on Georgia’s interstates they are unfortunately only for live viewing.

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