It’s happened again: a shooting on the highway that left one man seriously hurt.
This time, the scene of the crime was the entrance ramp to the Palmetto southbound near Northwest 36th Street.
Images showed a white BMW SUV riddled with bullets as Florida Highway Patrol investigated the crime that led to a major backup on the highway.
Retired Miami-Dade police major and attorney Ignacio Alvarez said there are two logical reasons that could spark this violence.
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“It could be some type of retaliation, or it could be just simple road rage,” Alvarez said
Earlier this month, NBC 6 covered two highway shootings in Broward County on I-95. In one of the shootings, a man suffered life-threatening injuries.
And back in November 2022, Broward County was once again the scene of what deputies called a road rage incident that left a preschool teacher dead.
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Alvarez said he doesn't believe the shootings don't constitute a pattern since they weren't done by the same individual or group.
While these crimes don’t appear to be connected, the similarities are part of a concerning trend. And it’s not just happening in Florida — California and Illinois have seen a surge in expressway shootings in recent years.
The state of Illinois even created a dashboard mapping every highway shooting since 2019.
Florida does not track such shootings.
According to Alvarez, highways just happen to be where these shootings unfold.
“Arbitrary and random, it's wherever they have the best opportunity to commit the crime,” Alvarez said.
It’s unclear what’s behind the uptick, but the nonprofit Everytown For Gun Safety has one theory - pandemic-related stress coupled with an increase in gun sales in recent years.
“I think what can be done to curb (violence) is to close the cases, as simple as that,” Alvarez said.
It can be very difficult to solve these types of cases. In the last four cases to happen in South Florida, one only has ended in an arrest.
