An Ohio road rage incident has ended in tragedy for both parties, again, reinforcing the importance to gun owners—or anybody for that matter—to just drive on and avoid conflicts at all costs.
Arguing self-defense in the road rage incident, which resulted in the shooting death of George Jensen, 40, on May 17, 2023, Dacarrei Kinard, 31, was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and additional firearms-related charges. Kinard was facing murder charges, but the jury, which deliberated for five hours, found him guilty of the lesser, albeit still very serious manslaughter charge.
In court, Kinard described the scenario, as recounted by the Akron Beacon Journal:
Hours before the shooting, Kinard said he left Columbus for Youngstown to attend his nephew’s sixth birthday party. On the way, he stopped at a Mansfield music store to pick up a clarinet for his teenage daughter before continuing north and west.
He said he drove with cruise control on at 65 mph for much of the drive. Then, while in the far-left lane, he noticed a blue Mazda weaving in and out of traffic, speeding up and down and flashing its lights.
“He was tailgating me,” he said. “It made me mad, so I sped up to about 72 [mph].”
Soon Kinard heard what he described as the noise of rumble strips coming from the shoulder lane to his left. Looking toward the noise, he saw the Mazda speeding by him.
In an attempt to drive away from the Mazda, Kinard said, he switched lanes multiple times — but the Mazda cut him off each time.
Eventually, Kinard moved alongside the Mazda when he merged into the rightmost lane. That’s when he saw the Mazda creep into his lane, he recalled.
“I was thinking this guy was trying to harm me, run me off the road,” he said.
Boxed in by the Mazda, a white trailer to his front and a vehicle to his rear, Kinard said he swerved into the right shoulder and merged back into the slow lane in front of the trailer.
That’s when Kinard said Jensen pointed a black object at him.
“I took cover. I went down. I grabbed my firearm, and when I looked up, he was still pointing whatever he was pointing at me,” Kinard said. “I was scared, and I just fired. I didn’t want him to hurt me. I’m sorry.”
Immediately after shooting eight bullets into the Mazda, he saw the vehicle swerve left, giving him room to speed away. He recalled exiting I-76 before re-entering the westbound lanes, passing the scene and continuing to Columbus.
The Beacon Journal reported witness who testified during the trial supported Kinard’s allegations of Jensen’s aggressive driving, but none recalled “seeing the blue Mazda (Jensen was driving) attempt to drive him off the road.”
Kinard might have helped his cause had he called 911 immediately following the incident, but instead, he admitted to exiting the highway and then driving back to survey the scene before driving on. He also admitted lying to investigators about owning a firearm or being in the area at the time of the incident and hiding the gun in a storage locker.
Kinard’s sentencing is set for April 12.
One family has a lost a member to death and another is now going to lose one to prison. There are never any winners in road rage encounters that turn violent.
One of those charges was having a firearm under disability. He was previously found guilty of improper use of a firearm in a motor vehicle.
He is a thug that should have been found guilty of MURDER!
He has no business of ever roaming free among society but because of a prosecutor that couldn’t indict a ham sandwich he is looking at a piddly 10-13 1/2 years.. And when you factor in good behavior and other “brownie points”, he’ll do half that!
Arm yourselves people. The only one responsible for your safety and well being is YOU!
The inept legal system sure doesn’t give a crap about it!
Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.
There are other solutions to problems like this, but we gave up on such over fifty years ago.
If the guy is booking past you, just let him go. The befrontment is a few seconds to a few minutes at that point. You make it home alive and without spending bail money, then you tell your significant other “traffic is crazy today you won’t believe what this guy did” and that’s the end of it.
I couldn’t tell you the number of times I’ve had another driver just haul past me at a high rate of knots only for me to catch up to them minutes later without me exceeding the speed limit.
I just let them go. They will either get caught in slow traffic, hit a stationary roadside object, or rear-end another vehicle. Sometimes they will get caught by the cops or trigger a speed camera.
Karma is a bitch.
Conflict is to be avoided.
Be like the porcupine.
I’ve taken to flipping my rearview mirror up and out of the way as to avoid unintentional eye-contact with people riding my ass. From decades of city living I can tell you eye-contact rarely leads to anything positive. Nothing but apes and gorillas out there posturing, posing and looking for any excuse to pop off.
If I had pulled a gat every time an imbecile drove like a lunatic there’d be hundreds of shot perps. It’s gotten a LOT worse lately as has crime & lowlife behavior. Driving more than 50 years I know the look🙄
You are a mere child, I’ve been driving for almost 70 years…
So I am not seeing George had a firearm?
Sounds like George started a road rage fight and the other guy had a gun. Two stupid people and now both families are impacted for it.
“That’s when Kinard said Jensen pointed a black object at him”
The article doesn’t indicate if LEO actually found a weapon in Jensen’s vehicle.
Well, it sounded good in court, and seems to have gotten him off with a lesser sentence.
Yes, you should drive on and let the other person go and put as much distance between yourself and him/her. But what if the other person won’t let you? From the description, it kinda sounds like that’s what might have happened here.
Exactly that has happened to me. Maybe the other guy didn’t like my Honda, or I took too long to pull to the right as I was passing other cars, maybe he thought I was driving too fast, whatever. So this guy passes me in his pickup truck, and no sooner has he done so, he slows to 55 right next to a semi so that neither I nor anyone else can pass. This went on for some miles. Finally, at the last second, the guy hammers the gas and cuts in front of the semi to get off at an exit. Very strange.
28 AGs Ask SCOTUS to End Assault Weapons Bans.
“He also admitted lying to investigators about owning a firearm or being in the area at the time of the incident and hiding the gun in a storage locker.”
👆This certainly did not help Dacarrie Kinard’s situation but, prior violent felons do what they do.
Kinard road raged right back, and killed Jensen for driving like a jerk.
“He was tailgating me,” he said. “It made me mad, so I sped up to about 72 [mph].”
Instead of getting out of the fast lane, he sped up. Instead of hitting the brakes when he saw the “black object” (yeah right), Kinard fired eight shots on a busy highway. Then he tried to cover up his crime. Jenson was a jerk, but it sounds like Kinard was playing along. They should have gotten Kinard for murder.
Double vibe check,
double fail.
Box for one,
the other, jail.
Nothing good comes from road rage interactions. I drive all over Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Bad drivers cut me off almost daily. I just get over in the right lane and let them go.
Seattle area is really bad for reckless driving. Every third car in the Seattle area has expired plates. Every driver on I-90 and I-5 are on their cell phone. Worse in winter, Seattle drivers refuse to purchase snow tires, end up getting stuck and blocking highways. I just take my time, getting paid by the hour.
He should have have stopped, 911 and gotten his story out instead of them havung to look for him. He was of course presumed guilty.
Best option before shooting is to let the guy go around.
Seems there were a lot of better choices Kinard could have chosen and avoided the whole thing.
E.g., ignore the guy, take an exit, slow down and let him go ahead.
It may not be easy, but still anything beats the end results of this event after all a shooting avoided is a winner.
A few seconds/minutes out of one’s life is not going to make that much difference whereas the time spent in this incident cost one his life and another jail time and probably at some point bad memories.
If a person has a conscious, then the bad memories are going to haunt them at some point if they live long enough.
Driving a junk car to the desert to shoot it up some teens picked me to swing tire irons at the $40 Dart for slow driving on a four lane so I pushed them off the road in their noisy little car into a tree with the heavier vehicle at 25mph. A valuable lesson was taught that day: E=MV. Pity public schools don’t teach that to little heads full of fluff.
Ray Shoesmith says there’s bullies because we let them get away with it…yep.
Did your school teach you punctuation or sentence structure? I guess not.
I presume later, the bullet riddled junk car would then be transported to an appropriate junk yard for processing?
I’ll take shit that never happened for $1000 Alex.
If it did – then you and the shooter in this story are essentially one and the same
The correct formula is KE = 1/2 MV^2
Driving 65 mph in the left lane seems a pretty reliable way to incite road rage.
There was a lady in town here who wrote a letter to the editor complaining about everyone speeding on the Interstate and honking at her. As far as she was concerned, if she was driving the speed limit, she had every right to hog the left lane. (Once you get out of town, the speed limit rises to 70, but the average speed of left lane drivers is closer to 80.)
In most places the left most lane is only for passing, you are not supposed to stay in it for most of your travel. Even at legal max speed, a driver should not be hanging out in the passing lane for extended periods.,
When you get in a situation like this, all you have to do is remember one thing. It ain’t worth it.
So he is int he PASSING lane blocking the flow of traffic. When the car flashed his lights, he just sped up but didn’t get over. Sad situation.
“When the car flashed his lights, he just sped up”
In many states, a driver is required to yield the right of way to ‘emergency vehicles’, which are indicated by the ‘emergency flashers’.
When one doesn’t know if the vehicle with flashers has a medical emergency, such as a hemorrhaging gunshot victim or a difficult birth, to react aggressively and continue to block that vehicle is unconscionable.
This wasn’t flashers, it was his headlights. Typical of the tards who weave in and out of multiple lanes, expecting people to get out of their way just because they flash their headlights.
I don’t tend to hang in the fast lane unless I’m in the process of passing (sometimes multiple) vehicles. I can be doing 70 or better in the process, and still get tards coming up behind be flashing headlights. I ignore it, and may even purposely slow down a tad.
Generally its illegal for non emergency vehicles to use emergency lights on public roads.
Not too many “emergency vehicles? that are blue Mazdas.
Driving north and west out of Mansfield will not get you to Youngstown. Something doesn’t add up.
The correct formula is KE = 1/2 MV^2
Makes me glad that my old retired cop car has factory ballestic panels in the front doors. Still best not to drive like a jackass and let jackass drivers go.
Biden does suck, but you owe me a thousand, sissy boy. Someone attacks you, so you deal with them. Quit crying for gangsters who should have gotten shot for ADW . And take note: sentence structure counts when testosterone is in low amounts.
methinks he doth protest too much…
shit never happened you internet keyboard warrior you..