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Truck driver shot at in middle of busy I-77 during road-rage incident

By Gina Esposito, wsoctv.com
By Gina Esposito, wsoctv.com

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Demetraus Young told Channel 9 he was driving a tractor-trailer for work on I-77 northbound Wednesday morning when a white car cut him off.

“They just came in front of me, hit their brakes, laughing,” Young said. “They rolled down their window. I rolled down mine, so we (were) talking and talking.”

Young said things escalated when he was about exit off at Billy Graham Parkway when he saw the passenger pull out a gun.

“Slowed down and turned my body, you know, because the gun was aimed directly at me,” Young said. “When I was about to turn off the exit, they sped up and shot the truck three times and kept going.”

Young showed Channel 9 pictures of the bullet holes and described how close they were to hitting him.

He said two of the bullets hit his cab, one below his seat, and another near his foot.

The bullet near his foot got stuck in the metal and never came through, and another bullet went through the trailer.

“It’s very dangerous when we see things like this happening,” Jonathan Frisk, with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department's Crime Prevention Unit, said.

Frisk said people who fired shots out of a moving vehicle can face some pretty serious penalties, especially if someone is injured.

“It could not only cause harm to the person that you are trying to shoot at, but several other people on the road,” Frisk said.

Young said there was an empty lane in between them when the shots were fired. He credits his truck’s thick metal for saving his life.

“If it was in a personal car, I would have got hit,” Young said.

Police are investigating. No arrests have been made.

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