What to Know
- Driver killed in apparent road rage shooting after confrontation while entering the highway.
- Victim's girlfriend managed to steer the truck off the highway without hitting any other vehicles before crashing into sign.
- Police searching for the driver of a black BMW 7 Series with dark windows and silver rims.
After more closely reviewing surveillance video and speaking to witnesses, Arlington police say a person inside a BMW shot and killed a young man during a suspected road rage incident along Interstate 20 Sunday evening.
Homicide investigators said 19-year-old Dylan Spaid, of Grand Prairie, entered the highway at Cooper Street just before 6 p.m. and was fatally shot less than a half-mile down the road.
On Thursday afternoon, police released the surveillance video they say shows the driver in the BMW is the shooter. Police also revealed the second occupant in the BMW may be a female.
Take a good look at these stills that are from Sunday road rage murder. Anyone with info asked to call Detective Greisbach at 817-459-5325 pic.twitter.com/jmNEHpQC5n
— Arlington Police, TX (@ArlingtonPD) June 29, 2017
Spaid and his girlfriend were headed home after having dinner when they were either blocked or cut-off while entering the highway. Spaid is said to have made a hand gesture. Someone in the other car responded with a bullet.
"For someone to pull a gun out and shoot a kid, got to be a sick person to do that," said Spaid's older brother Jeremy Buxton.
Spaid was shot in the head. His girlfriend was with him and tried to stop the bleeding with her own shirt.
"We're just glad that he wasn't alone when he left,” another brother Ryan Mentel said. “It was with somebody that he cared deeply for and somebody that cared about him."
Police also credited Spaid's girlfriend for steering the truck off the highway without hitting any other vehicles. Realizing her boyfriend had been shot, she unbuckled her seat belt and reached over to grab the steering wheel.
The truck then crossed an exit ramp and the frontage road before crashing into a sign in front of a National Tire & Battery store.
Spaid was taken to a nearby hospital where he later died. His girlfriend was hospitalized with several non life-threatening injuries from the crash, including a cut to her face. She is expected to be OK, though her emotional pain runs deep. So does the pain of Spaid's big and loving family.
"I just want people to help me find the person who did this to my baby because he didn't deserve this," said his mother Nena Bruxton. "He did not."
Spaid lived with his family in the house he grew up in in Grand Prairie. He worked with them at a family-owned tire business.
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"19-year-old kid, hard-working," said Buxton.
And he lived for them, in everything they did together.
"Everywhere I'm gonna go, I'm gonna see him," Mentel said.
But the gunman who shot him never really saw him at all.
"It's senseless, it's people not caring about people," Mentel said. "Doesn't matter how strong you are, it's my little brother. I've been there ever since he was born. I've lived with him. He was everything."
Now the family hopes someone who did see something will come forward.
"I hope they get caught and I hope they get what they deserve," Mentel said.
Police say the shooter's vehicle is a black four-door BMW 7 Series sedan, with dark tinted windows and silver rims.
Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call Tarrant County Crime Stoppers at 817-469-TIPS.
Arlington police spokesman Lt. Christopher Cook warned that it's often not worth engaging other drivers because you never know who is armed and what their temperament may be.
"Everyone has seen, time and time again across this country, people get really driven up over driving situations," said Cook. "In this incident, it escalated very quickly."
He added that police had received about 14 tips by Monday evening but none had developed into solid leads.
Arlington police said they do not believe this incident is connected to other recent road rage shootings in North Texas.
NBC 5 's Alice Barr, Ken Kalthoff and Tim Ciesco contributed to this report.
