Enraged Driver Fires At Other Car

All Robert and Cheryl Kyle wanted to do was apologize to a fellow motorist they thought they had wronged.

In response, the driver of the other car pulled out a 9mm handgun and fired, hitting Kyle in the arm.

The Brush Prairie couple were on their way home from Christmas dinner in The Dalles, Ore., when Cheryl Kyle unintentionally cut off the other driver as she started to make a lane change on Interstate 205 in Portland.

After narrowly missing the other car, Cheryl Kyle slowed, and the other car slowed, too. When she sped up, so did the other car. With the other vehicle alongside them to the right, they tried to signal an apology.

“We put our hands up, palms up, and we were saying, ‘I’m sorry. We didn’t see you,”’ Cheryl Kyle said.

“He looked at me with a real mean look on his face,” Kyle, 45, said. “He laid the gun on the side of the door and pulled the trigger.”

The bullet struck Kyle just above his right elbow.

The Kyles called 911 on their cellular phone. The driver disappeared on the westbound exit to Washington 14, across the Columbia River.

“He didn’t race off,” Mrs. Kyle, 41, said. “He just continued like this was an everyday occurrence.”

On Sunday, Portland police said they still had no leads on the car or the driver.

The Kyles said the man was about 40 years old with dark, curly hair. He drove an older, tan-and-brown Toyota with a Washington state license plate.