A UPS semi-truck driver has admitted to being the I-5 shooter. He has pled guilty to charges including attempted murder and has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In the summer of 2020, police in Oregon were on the hunt for a shooter along I-5. All summer someone had been taking shots at vehicles, but no one knew where the bullets were coming from.
Police knew of at least eight separate shootings along a 33 mile stretch of I-5 between Central Point and Roseburg. The shootings occurred between May and August of 2020.
Many victims didn’t know their car had been shot until much later. One woman was struck by a bullet in the arm however. She was taken to a nearby hospital and made a full recovery.
Police had a break when they put together that multiple victims had told police that a semi-truck had been near them at the time of the shooting. Some said they thought it was a UPS double or triple trailer.
The Oregon State Patrol forensic team determined that the same gun was used in all the shootings. It was a .45 Auto Caliber Hi-Point, model JHP, semi-automatic pistol.
When police finally stopped 49-year-old Kenneth Ayers in August because his vehicle matched the description they were looking for, they found that same weapon in his cab. Police were able to get a warrant for Ayer’s GPS and ELD data which confirmed that he was at the location of each shooting when it happened.
A grand jury indicted Ayers on 34 counts. On Tuesday Ayers pled guilty to 15 counts. The were three counts of Attempted Murder in the Second Degree, five counts of Unlawful Use of a Weapon, two counts of Criminal Mischief in the First Degree, three counts of Recklessly Endangering Another Person, and two counts of Criminal Mischief in the Second Degree.
During his sentencing, Ayers declined to make a statement. It is still unclear what his motive was for the shooting. The only apparent change was that just prior to the first shooting his route was changed from one that took him North of his origin in Roseburg to one that took him South.
Ayers has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
What a complete idiot this individual is
Glad he’s out of the truck and off the streets to prison where he definitely belong!
So sad. What a horrible thing to do. Drivers are supposed to be monitored and protected by their dispatchers and companies. When they are not happy with their job then they should quit and do something else, if they cannot work it out. Driving doubles takes a very safe, wonderfully skilled driver. Companies should always make sure their drivers are happy. This driver went over the edge. So sad. He needs mental health care asap.
Im sure he will be quite popular in prison
“What can Brown(Eye) do for you” ?
Buhahahahahahaha 😁😁😂😂😂
UPS, in my opinion, is the worst delivery service available. I have had nothing but problems with them delivering packages. They once insisted they delivered a package, but they delivered it to the wrong address…
How is this relevant…🤦♂️🤦♂️
Well that’s totally relevant to the case! I sure as hell would have reported that to the law enforcement agencies sir.. bahaha.
🤣
Apparently he was miffed his route was changed, and was shooting at random innocent motorist, to take his frustrations out, but the motorist didn’t change his route it was his company and supervisor, luckily he didn’t kill anyone, it was bad enough that a motorist was shot in the arm, otherwise he be looking at life or maybe the death penalty
If I had to make a bet, I’d bet that he picked targets based upon some perceived driving slight. “She cut me off”, or “He should have yielded the right-of-way to me”. He was presumably already heated about the route change, and probably other problems – at home, or financial, or whatever – and the perception of a slight on the road was enough to push him over the edge. I mean, he went almost 50 years without shooting anyone, right?
Not trying to justify what he did, but it probably wasn’t entirely random, and he probably didn’t think that his victims were innocent. They likely were, but not in his mind (which was clearly spinning sideways)…
We’ve all had days like this, where every little thing makes us angrier, even though (rationally) it probably shouldn’t. Thankfully, we don’t all go on a shooting spree…
Just another psycho on the road, who just happens to also have one of the best paying trucking jobs in the world. Crazy
Ok. Let’s be reasonable about all this. First all truckers should be banned owning any weapon….( 2nd amendment???…..) Next part of the ROAD CHECK program should be mandatory cab searches ( just like the Tenn puc, remember them). On top of that there should be an immediate congressional investigation (led by Nancy P of course) into how a trucker was ever able to buy a weapon……and finally UPS should be permanently banned from making any changes to their drivers’ schedules. That should solve the problem. LOL.
Lmao!
Nothing reasonable about your lack of sense and comment about taking the 2nd away. I will not be a sheep!!
Not happening!!
You need to clean the road schmutz off your sarcasm-detector.
Don’t give them ideas…!
So one had to look real hard and see where the driver Snape. Even then he shouldn’t have involved any innocent people, not to mention with a Gun.
1) UPS, FED EX, OLD Domino’s these all companies really pushes hard on their drivers to deliver on time. As quick as possible. That’s why we see them drive so fast even though they are hauling doubles, triple trailer on winter weather conditions.
I have past experience on hauling for them. A) You wait at the dock shipper for more than 4 hrs than they expect you deliver straight through.
B) Its time sensitive
2) The driver was probably angry because maybe maybe away from home. But still than you can man up and talk to your manager the worst case scenario is you quit your job.
3) When one attack an innocent beings no matter what kind, size, race, gender. It shows the act of terrorism, isnt that what the vocabulary implies when a person terrorize the life’s of other.
4) Let’s all pray for this poor soul and the victim as well. Lets hope the driver angers goes away as time passes, and let’s hope the public/judge have mercy on him.
“Terrorism” implies a political agenda, and an effort to promote it by intimidation and violence against a society as a whole. That doesn’t seem to be the case here. He was just an angry man who didn’t seem to feel that he had any recourse to resolve the injustices that he felt had been perpetrated against him.
If you feel sufficiently oppressed, unheard, and think that you have little enough left to lose; this is what happens. It translates into violence, not necessarily directed in a specific or productive (does that even apply, here?) direction. I don’t think he expected his actions to change anything; he probably just wanted other people to feel a taste of what he was feeling – share the pain.
First off I’m surprised no is outraged this redneck got only 20 years after being charged with 500 attempted murders and other charges. White privilege is alive and well. And many of you think it doesn’t exist LMAO!!!!!!!
It’s worth pointing out that one person got shot in the arm, and some property damage occurred. He’ll be in jail until his 60’s if he serves out his term – more probably, his 50’s, at which time he will get out, be despised by everyone he ever knew, be unemployable, and probably commit suicide.
It’s not a privilege to be white. We don’t even know if he was white. And 20 years in prison for shooting someone in the arm and damaging some cars is arguably too heavy-handed of a punishment – or arguably not enough – mostly depending upon what other cases you choose to compare it to, and whose point of view you decide to take.
It’s a privilege to be born into money. A few white people have a lot more of the money than all of the other-colored people – but most white people have just as little privilege as everybody else. If you want racism to stop, you have to stop being racist. White people can get just as offended by it as everybody else, and it’s especially offensive to the people that are targeted by it.
We do know that he was male. Let’s blame men for all the senseless violence in the world, why don’t we?
Testify!!
Just for giggles, I looked up tge story online, and yeah, he was white.
Lots of other white people don’t shoot at random cars on the highway, however, and the implication that they are somehow privileged to do so is akin to ascribing criminality to other racial groups. All black people are not necessarily drug dealers because one black guy deals drugs. All Hispanics are not violent gang members because one Hispanic stabs someone in a gang-initiation ritual. If you’re tired of being profiled by police (or anyone else) because of your race, then stop profiling others because of theirs. You are teaching them to do so, by your example. Your woes in life are not just everyone else’s fault. You have influence, too – and if this is what you are doing with it, you’re doing it wrong.
Just look at the state that prosecuted the felon.
It’s the Left coast man.
Where are you seeing
500 charges of attempted murder???
A point this embellished with lies is a self-defeating point.
As are most points couched in racist Identity Politics.
Now we know what type of drivers UPS is looking for.
Some ones as the post office? From now on, we’ll call it “going UPSal”…
Atleast he’ll have a job waiting for him at swift in 20 years.
he was shooting all the scab drivers out there
UPS COME TO KILL UA ALL
Us all
If you are going to engage in repetitive criminal behavior, you’ve got to change your patterns of behavior. Also important: be aware of the digital “fingerprint” you leave behind. Look around for surveillance cameras during your planning stages. Think about what detectives can trace back to you and what evidence can be used by prosecutors in court to get a conviction against you. You’ll also want to have a criminal defense attorney and pay them a good retainer. Memorize your attorney’s phone number: you get one freephone call when in custody. Most important: exercise your right to remain silent. I hope my advice makes your budding career as a criminal more successful.
Stop watching so much murder porn!!! (South Park reference)
I can’t defend truckers anymore. Every time I do, I am reminded by things like this why people don’t like truck drivers. There is no organization of truckers. No coordination. People just going to a CDL school and filling the seat at a company until there are automated trucks eliminating all of the “meat sacks” behind the wheel.
25 years in this business. No accidents. I’ve been a first responder at multiple accident scenes. I’ve saved countless lives over 3 million miles of my career with my driving actions. I’ve even stopped fights in truck stops between these idiots. And I will continue to do things my way. Helping people. Doing the right thing. And every day I will a story about a truck driver doing something horrible or stupid. No honor. No respect.
But hey! People still need freight delivered. And it doesn’t matter who does it, so long as it gets done. Safety is irrelevant, but we are all tracked like criminals by ELDs. Basically we are all treated like criminals for just having a CDL. And it’s guys like this who are why. And every day these trucking companies are hiring these guys left and right. So it will come as no surprise to me when robots take all of our jobs. No one will stop it and no one wants truckers to exist anymore anyway. I LOVE this job, but I can’t stand what the industry has become. And it doesn’t look like it will ever get better.
Be safe folks. For those of you who are doing the right thing and keeping the trucking industry a safe place for EVERYONE on the road, THANK YOU.
Treat people like criminals, and they’ll start acting that way…
More to the point; people who don’t think that they deserve it, and who have other options, will eventually stop tolerating that kind of treatment, and exercise those options – leaving only people without other options, and people who are either willing to tolerate it, or who feel that they deserve to be treated that way.
A “semi-truck” driver? I’ve heard of “trucks” and “semi-trailers” but never a “semi-truck”. What is that, a half of a truck?
You want to write about trucking news, at least understand the terminology.
Arguably, a tractor is only half of a tractor-trailer combination vehicle, so if you drive a tractor, you might be characterized as a “semi-truck” driver – as opposed to a straight truck, which is the entire vehicle in a single unit.
It’s mostly semantic, and probably not really worth arguing about. Language in common use, versus precise definitions – what exactly is a “hacker”, and does technical accuracy matter more, or common understanding, when trying to communicate? So what image does a “semi-truck” conjure, in the minds of the reading audience, and does the usage of the term successfully convey the image that they writer intended? It seems likely.
I have a tremendous urge to shoot at these insane drivers risking everyone’s life on the road almost everyday. One of our safety advisors told me there are people out there who don’t care if they live or die. I had never thought of that before but I believe she’s right. That’s why I could never carry a desert eagle 50 caliber in my truck at any time!