Road rage attack leaves mom dead and 3-year-old injured, TN authorities say. ‘Cruel’
A man fatally shot a 24-year-old mother and injured her 3-year-old daughter in a road rage incident in Tennessee, authorities said and news outlets reported.
The shooting occurred at about 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 15, in Savannah, about a 120-mile drive east from Memphis, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in a Dec. 16 news release.
When authorities arrived at the scene, they found the mother — later identified as Zoe Johnson — and her 3-year-old daughter suffering from gunshot wounds, investigators said.
Hardin County Sheriff Johnny Alexander told WREG that Johnson was traveling along a highway with her fiance and two young daughters when a pickup truck driver fired a gun in their direction.
“Two vehicles were side-by-side. One of them cut the other one off what we could get so far, and the pickup began following the car,” the sheriff told the outlet. “They tried to get home or get (to) a residence, and that’s when the incident occurred.”
Johnson was taken to a medical center nearby and pronounced dead, the bureau said.
Investigators said Johnson’s daughter was taken to a Nashville hospital with critical injuries. She is expected to make a full recovery, family members said in a Dec. 16 Facebook post.
“I truly will never understand why such a cruel man would decide to take my sister from this world,” Alisha Hall, a family friend, said in a Dec. 17 Facebook post. “I never want anyone to get the call we all got Sunday.”
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said Clint Newton, 42, was identified as the suspected shooter. He was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, investigators said.
Armed road rage incidents surged more than 400 percent from 2014 to 2023, according to a 2024 analysis by The Trace. Tennessee ranks among the top states with recorded rates of annual armed road rage incidents, the report said.
