SEATTLE — When the 911 operator picked up the call, a man could be heard screaming on the other end of the line.
“Somebody’s shooting me. Somebody’s shooting me,” the panicked voice cried.
A bullet fired from a passing car on Interstate 5 south of Tukwila's Southcenter Mall hit the man in the neck, just one incident in a rash of high-profile shootings last December and January on Seattle-area freeways.
The case is part of an alarming rise of gun incidents in recent years that KING 5 tracked using records provided by the Washington State Patrol (WSP), the agency which investigates highway crimes.
The KING 5 Investigators review of WSP’s 911 data shows 577 calls from citizens in King County last year, between February 2023 to February 2024, reporting a roadway crime that involved a gun. Many of those calls involve firearm brandishing — someone who flashes or points a gun at another driver. A much smaller number involved an actual shooting where a victim was hit, as in the Dec. 6, 2023, incident that left the driver with a neck wound.
“I kind of grabbed the wheel and told him to brake,” said Isabella, who was the passenger in the car when her boyfriend was struck in the neck and no longer able to drive. She asked that KING 5 not use her real name for safety reasons.
“I started crying because he let go of the wheel. And then I saw my boyfriend [lean] over. He was kind of saying ‘bye’ to me because he didn’t know if he was going to make it,” Isabella said. “The last place I expected this to happen was a freeway,” she said of the unprovoked attack.
But data show that more drivers are unsafe on the interstate in the past few years.
In WSP records from March 2019 through March 2020 – the start of the COVID pandemic shutdown in Washington state – there were 339 gun-related calls on King County highways. That means gun incidents soared by 70% last year when compared to pre-pandemic times.
The state patrol said one reason may be that the open, uncongested highways of the pandemic era are gone.
“There was no traffic. You get used to that and once traffic starts coming back, your commute time rises and rises,” said Trooper Rick Johnson. “Could that potentially be why there’s more aggravation. We haven’t done any study that would say that for sure, but it could be part of it.”
Some high-profile shootings around the beginning of the year added to concerns about freeway safety. Isabella’s boyfriend and as many as five other motorists were allegedly shot at by 28-year-old Marco Ramos Valdez of Auburn, who is facing first-degree assault charges. WSP detectives said Valdez said voices told him to shoot cars during a drug-fueled spree last December. Isabella’s boyfriend and the other drivers survived.
In February, 35-year-old military veteran Evan Hershey was paralyzed in a separate incident on I-5 in Tukwila.
But there are far more cases in King County that don’t make news.
An aggressive driver shot Evan Dyer’s car on a stretch of I-5 near Federal Way. “I was in shock, an out-of-body experience,” Dyer said.
Sergey Kolbert had just wrapped up a heating and cooling job on Mercer Island when a stranger pulled alongside his work truck and fired a shot from an AR-15 rifle that missed the mark.
“You’re thinking, 'This is it, you know, you’re going to get shot for no reason,'” Kolbert said.
'Don't engage' with aggressive drivers, WSP warns
Reports show many other drivers had firearms displayed or pointed at them on local freeways.
On Highway 167, a driver pointed a black handgun at a woman, according to a Feb. 15 incident report. On Dec. 9, two drivers pointed handguns at each other, a witness reported after seeing an altercation on Highway 167 near the Highway 18 interchange.
On I-5, a driver pointed a pistol at a semitruck driver after the driver cut off the trucker, according to an incident report.
Trooper Johnson said the state patrol responds to these calls, but it is often unable to locate a suspect without a license plate or specific description. In many incident reports, victims or witnesses did not want follow-up investigation.
The case involving Isabella and her boyfriend is an exception. In many incident reports, the victims are arguing or engaging with the perpetrator and escalating the conflict.
“The victims having engaged with this other vehicle doesn’t mean they deserve to get shot at, but you don’t know what this other person’s capable of,” said Trooper Johnson.
The Washington State Patrol said restraining yourself in those situations is the most important thing you can do to keep yourself safe on the highway.
“Don’t engage with them, don’t brake check them. If you can, get out of their way, but don’t engage. That is the number one thing: don’t engage,” said Johnson.
Dyer, who was the victim of a separate road rage in 2021 that is still pending in King County court, has learned that lesson.
“Somebody’s in road rage, I just ignore them and just kind of get out of their way,” said Dyer.