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A 27-year-old man is charged with murder in connection with a road-rage shooting Thursday in Oak Cliff, Dallas police said.
Tomas Rodriguez Jr. was booked into the Dallas County jail shortly before midnight Thursday. His bail was set at $250,000, and he did not have an attorney listed in court records.
Officers had been called to reports of a shooting about 1:15 p.m. in the 2300 block of South Hampton Road, near the Hampton Medical Center and West Illinois Avenue, according to police.
They found Jason Soto, 18, in a blue Chevrolet pickup that had crashed into two vehicles in a parking lot. Soto had been shot in the head and was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Witnesses said that Soto had been involved in an altercation with the occupants of two other vehicles — a silver Dodge pickup and a blue Ford Mustang — at the intersection of Hampton and Illinois. After he turned north onto Hampton, the other vehicles followed and the Dodge’s driver attempted to ram his pickup and then shot him, an arrest-warrant affidavit says.
The other vehicles then drove off, but witnesses soon located the Dodge and determined that it was registered at the same home as a blue Mustang.
The Dodge’s driver told police that he had been involved in a road-rage incident with Soto and that he called the Mustang’s driver, who caught up to them, the affidavit says.
When detectives interviewed Rodriguez, who they said was driving the Mustang, he said Soto started cursing them out at the intersection, the affidavit says. He said he believed Soto “had something,” so he fired a shot at his vehicle, according to the affidavit.
Rodriguez told police he then went home, put his gun away and changed clothes, the affidavit says.