Driver Shaken After Window Mysteriously Shatters

A crash and a blur was all Jim Donohue heard or saw.

Then a shower of glass landed in his lap.

In a bizarre incident Wednesday afternoon on Interstate 90, the passenger-side window of the van he was driving burst - possibly from a gunshot - as Donohue navigated the freeway through the Spokane Valley.

“All of a sudden my window just exploded and glass flew by me,” Donohue said.

Not knowing what to think, Donohue thought the worst.

“Somebody shot at me,” he said, his hands still shaking.

But Deputy Chuck Haley, who investigated the incident, downplayed the possibility of a bullet piercing Donohue’s window.

“It could have been a BB gun. It could have been a rock kicked up by a car,” Haley said, throwing his arms in the air. “It could have been any number of a 1,000 things.”

No bullet was found in the truck.

Haley said it was possible that a bullet could have passed through the truck’s cab and exited out the open window on Donohue’s side. But the probability of a bullet flying straight through a truck traveling at 60 miles per hour is small, Haley said, especially considering the distance it would have traveled.

Dohohue, who works for U-Haul, was headed west on I-90 near Spalding’s salvage yard in the in a U-Haul maintenance truck when the window shattered.

If it was a bullet that blew out Donohue’s window, it would have probably been fired from one of the grassy fields on either side of the salvage yard, or Spalding’s itself, Haley said. Deputies received no other complaints of shooting in the area.

Mary Pritzl, who was driving next to Donohue when her white BMW was pelted with glass, was furious. Thinking Donohue had thrown ice out the window at her as he passed, Pritzl hustled to catch him.

“I was just pulling up beside him to say, ‘You jerk,”’ Pritzl said. “Now I’m just going, ‘Oh sheesh.’ If I’d have been going a little bit faster, it would’ve been me.”

One of the left-side headlights on Pritzl’s car was cracked by flying glass, she said. The paint on the car’s hood and its windshield were also chipped.

Despite the unknowns, Donohue was sure of one thing.

“It scared the heck out of me, I know that,” he said. “Unbelievable.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo