HOUSTON — The trouble began with an argument between two drivers who pulled into slow-moving traffic after an Astros baseball game last summer. It ended with two shots fired from a moving Buick, which exploded through the glass of a fleeing Ford pickup.
The bullets missed the truck’s driver, Paul Castro, but one – just one – hit his teenage son David, who was in the passenger seat. As Mr. Castro drove to get help, a 911 worker urged him to apply pressure to the wound on the back of his son’s head. But David didn’t make it.
The random senselessness of the murder shocked Houston. But it was one of dozens of similar incidents across the country over the past year amid an explosion of shootings and killings blamed on street anger.
Those sudden bursts of violence — a man in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who repeatedly fired after an argument at a red light; a Georgia driver shot dead during a family road trip — are unique to any part of America amid a population increasingly nervous and gun-wielding. But they were perhaps most pronounced on the streets of Texas.
“In the past, people would call each other names, throw up their fingers and move on,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in an interview. “Instead of throwing up your finger, now pull out your gun and shoot.”
Last year, with what appeared to be increasing numbers of motorists firing guns, the Dallas Police Department began prosecuting street shootings for the first time. The results were alarming: 45 wounded, 11 dead.
In Austin, police last year recorded 160 episodes of motorists pointing or firing guns at them; This year there have been 15 street shootings, in which three people have been killed. (Two others were stabbed in altercations over road rage.)
The prevalence of such violence, not just in Texas but across the country, suggests a cultural commonality, an extreme example of deteriorating behavior that has also flared up on airplanes and businesses. It’s as if the pandemic and the nation’s low spirits have made people forget how to behave in public while simultaneously buying millions more guns.
“It’s the same kind of wax ball: people get frustrated, feel tense, and act out toward others,” said Charis E. Kubrin, a criminologist at the University of California, Irvine. “One thing we do know is that gun sales have increased tremendously,” she added.
Last month, a woman walking her dog shot and injured another motorist in Oklahoma City. In Miami, a man fired 11 shots from his car on Interstate 95 in self-defense. A Los Angeles couple are on trial for shooting into a car during the morning rush hour last year and killing a 6-year-old boy on the way to daycare.
Criminologists warned that any theory of the motivation behind street killings is hampered by a lack of data. Most police departments do not keep statistics on street riot episodes, in part because it is not itself a crime category. There is no federal database.
Arizona has attempted to get a rough approximation of the number of road traffic incidents by adding a “possible road rage” box to the form filled out by police officers for car accidents in 2018. The data showed an increase in such incidents over the past two years compared to 2021, according to Alberto Gutier, director of the Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.
“It’s going crazy,” he said of Road Rage. “People are so stupid.”
But, he added, the state doesn’t track the number of episodes that end in gunfire.
Gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety relied on the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization that compiles data from government sources and media reports, for its report on the rise in street shootings. The group noted that more than 500 people had been injured or killed in reported street fights over the past year, up from fewer than 300 in 2019.
“The story it tells is a definite and really worrying increase in incidents of road rage incidents with a gun,” said Sarah Burd-Sharps, senior director of research at Everytown for Gun Safety. “Only in this country is someone shot and injured or killed in a traffic accident every 17 hours.”
Texas was responsible for a quarter of the fatal shootings documented in the study last year, with 33 people killed in road traffic shootings in the state, up from 18 in 2019.
Among them was David Castro, the 17-year-old who died in Houston in July. David played drums in his high school marching band, wanted to study engineering in college, and hoped to get his driver’s license by the end of the summer.
“I went through classes with him while we drove,” his father said in an interview, recalling a conversation with David before the shooting when they encountered heavy traffic downtown after the Astros game. David’s 14-year-old brother was also in the car.
After allowing several cars to pull into his lane, Mr. Castro began pulling up in his pickup truck. That’s when a white Buick tried to enter the alley, he said. Neither gave ground; eventually the two cars touched. According to court records, a “verbal altercation” ensued.
A police officer directing traffic told Mr. Castro to let the Buick in. “So I let him in,” he said. “David was nervous. But I thought whatever that was, it’s over.”
But it wasn’t.
On the freeway, the Buick started flashing its lights and beeping its horn, Mr. Castro said. “I tried to get away and he stayed right behind me,” Mr. Castro said. As he turned into a turning lane under a freeway, he heard two shots. The rear window shattered. David, who was in the passenger seat, was hit in the back of the head.
“I just started screaming. And he continued to pursue us,” said Mr. Castro. “This wasn’t a street hoopla – this was a grown man taking the life of a child because his feelings were hurt.”
Police eventually made an arrest in the case, charging Gerald Wayne Williams, 35, with the murder. Mr Williams has since been released on bail. “I can’t think of anything more tragic,” said an attorney for Mr. Williams, Casey Keirnan, of the murder. But, he said, “my client denies that he is the person who shot him.”
The case drew widespread attention in Texas, as did another in Houston involving a 9-year-old girl, Ashanti Grant, who was shot and seriously injured while driving to a grocery store with her family in February.
“It’s unique in this moment,” said Mr. Turner. “I’m a native Houstonian. I’m in my seventh year as mayor. We just didn’t make it to the point where it was a noticeable event, except for last year.”
Mr Turner said a string of fatal cases has prompted the city to take steps to reconfigure its traffic cameras to keep records and eventually help catch street gunmen.
In Texas, motorists have been allowed to carry firearms in their cars without a license since 2007, a law known as the Texas Motorist Protection Act. A new measure enacted last year allows most Texans to carry a handgun in public without a license.
There are videos and tutorials online that offer tips on carrying and using a gun in a car.
Jacob Paulsen, who teaches an online course called Vehicle Firearms Tactics, said escape should always be the driver’s goal. “Your primary goal is your own survival,” said Mr. Paulsen. “If your main goal is to punish someone else or to ensure that another person goes to jail or gets justice, those are not good attitudes.”
The guns used in Dallas street riot episodes are often legally owned, said Detective Christina Smith of the Dallas Police Department, which investigates such shootings. “But with a legal firearm, you still have responsibility for what you do with it,” she added.
The cases pose problems for the police because they almost always happen between strangers, on lanes without cameras. “The few I’ve been able to find and actually arrest amount to disrespect,” said Detective Smith. “When you boil it down to its core, the reasons are silly.”
Dallas Police have compiled an ongoing report of street riot episodes, with data on the time and location of each reported incident, and whether a weapon was involved. They found that events tend to cluster in the afternoon.
“It seems to be happening around rush hour, in traffic, when people are going home,” said Maj. Mark Villarreal, who is helping lead a Dallas Police Department campaign this year to crack down on aggressive driving. “It is random. It is a crime of passion.”
That makes it difficult to solve every case, Lt. Kyle Cones of the Houston Police Department. Most escalate from a routine outrage, he said.
“I’ve read every report I’ve come across and every specific maneuver they said resulted in them being cut off,” the lieutenant said.
That was the case with the shooting of Ashanti, who was placed in a medically induced coma. “It was a cut-off type deal,” he said.
When gunshots erupted, Lieutenant Cones said Ashanti’s family members were lost in the car. But Ashanti, who was watching a video with headphones, didn’t.
Mr. Castro, David’s father, said having a gun in the car only makes such tragedies more likely.
“What I want people to do,” he said, “is talk to their husband, talk to their brother, talk to their son and say, ‘Do you really need a loaded gun in the cabin of your vehicle ?’”
Alain Delaquérière made a research contribution.