SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Lufino Reyes Mejorado was a good guy, his family says. The kind of guy who would pull over to help out another driver with a flat tire.
The 60-year-old Sacramento man had worked as a correctional officer at California State Prison, Solano, until 2018, when he retired with hopes of continuing his education to become a social worker and help homeless people.
Frances Mejorado Knox, his sister, said she was shocked to learn her brother was a victim of road rage, shot and killed Dec. 6 along Interstate 5 in Sacramento after an encounter with another driver that started several miles away on another freeway.
"We were all shocked, all of us. We could not believe it," Mejorado Knox said. "I never would've thought something like this would happen."
Her brother was among five shooting victims in eight violent incidents from Nov. 2 through Dec. 6 on highways in Sacramento and San Joaquin counties. Investigators determined three of the shootings were road rage incidents, two were related to criminal drug activity and the others remain under investigation, according to the California Highway Patrol Valley Division. Seven arrests have been made in those shootings.
These highway shootings prompted the CHP to warn drivers to never engage an aggressive driver. CHP Valley Division spokesman Officer Eulogio Ceja said these situations can escalate to violence quickly, and you don't know what the other driver is capable of doing.
"Don't make eye contact. If they're trying to pass you, let them pass. Let them be on their way and you maintain a safe distance from them," Ceja told The Sacramento Bee. "You don't know if they have any weapons. You don't know their mentality at that point."
He said drivers should remain calm and call 911 if an aggressive driver follows or continues to try to engage you. It's best to pull over at the nearest police station or ask a 911 operator to direct you to the safest place if you feel in danger, Ceja said.
Witnesses who spot someone acting with aggression on the road should immediately call 911 and provide as much information as possible; at least the color, make and model of a vehicle. Ceja said to write down a license plate number if you see it, and definitely come forward with video footage of an incident if you have it.
Witnesses might only see the aggressive driving behavior and not a crash that happened down the road or a violent attack. Ceja said witness accounts could be valuable to a road rage investigation.
"It seems like drivers are little more agitated now because there's a little more traffic on the roadways," Ceja said. "It was a little less (agitation) back when the pandemic barely started for that fact that there was less vehicles on the roadway, the freeways were a little bit more open."
In 2020, an average of 42 people per month nationwide were shot and killed or wounded in road rage shootings, according to a report published last June by Everytown for Gun Safety, the nonprofit gun violence prevention group. The advocacy group determined that the number of road rage injuries and deaths has increased annually since 2018, when 247 people were shot. There were 294 victims in 2019 and 403 in 2020.
Sacramento freeway shooting
The freeway dispute that resulted in Mejorado's death went on for several miles before gunshots were fired. About 2:15 p.m. that day, CHP officers received a report of a road rage incident that began in the area of Interstate 80 and Watt Avenue and continued onto the southbound lanes of Interstate 5, just north of Richards Boulevard.
Callers reported a maroon Dodge Ram pickup and a white Mercedes-Benz sedan were involved in the incident. The CHP said the two vehicles were heading south on I-5 near Richards Boulevard when the Mercedes driver pulled up next to the Dodge pickup and fired a gun multiple times.
The Dodge driver, later identified as Mejorado, was struck by gunfire, but he was able to pull to the freeway's shoulder, according to the CHP. He was immediately taken to a hospital, where he died from his injuries a short time later.
The Sacramento County district attorney's office has filed a murder charge against David Perry, 33, of Sacramento who is suspected of shooting Mejorado. Perry remains in custody at the Sacramento County Jail, where he is being held without bail pending the conclusion of his criminal case.
What Mejorado Knox knows was that her brother was on the phone calling 911, and other drivers on the freeway saw it happening and were on the phone reporting the violent encounter to authorities. The shooting that took her brother's life has left her fearful of getting on the road.
"I turn around and make sure they don't have a gun on me," Mejorado Knox said. "It's really scary to drive now."
Road rage expert
Driving is already an "inherently dangerous" activity that produces some anxiety that is exacerbated by our moods and what provokes us on the road, said Ryan Martin, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Martin's research focuses on anger and the aggressive behaviors involved in road rage.
The daily stress we experience over running late, bad weather or slow traffic can result in drivers responding irrationally to others on the road. Martin believes two years of a global pandemic, divisive political discourse and provoking language repeatedly used on social media has left us "on edge."
"There's just a lot of anger right now," Martin told The Bee. "And the road is the place where it's really showing."
Martin has created a series of TikTok posts on road rage, including how to avoid provocations, how to kill road rage with kindness and the dangers of road rage. He's found that TikTok offers him a good platform to share his research in a concise manner.
"No good can come from aggression on the road," said Martin, who authored the book "Why We Get Mad: How to Use Your Anger for Positive Change." "The best thing to do is back off rather than engage with them."
Sometimes, you might be a passenger riding with an angry driver. Martin has a TikTok about that. He said it's never effective for a passenger to simply tell a driver to relax. Instead, he said passengers should take ownership of their feelings by telling the driver "I'm not feeling safe right now."
Never raise your voice because that only adds to the driver's anxiety, Martin said. If you know a driver who often responds with aggression on the road, have a conversation with the driver when they're not behind the wheel.
"That can be a really scary experience," Martin said about passengers. "People are not super rational when they're in that mindset."
More than two months after his death, Mejorado's family is still grieving. They're heartbroken, wondering how much more he could've done with his life and how much he could've enjoyed his retirement.
"All of us are still hurting. We miss him tremendously," Mejorado Knox said. "We're missing out on a lot of good times we could've had together."
