ARLINGTON, Texas — For nearly five months, Arlington Police had been searching for the man who pulled over on I-20 after a fender-bender, walked up to the other driver's car and shot that driver in the head in front of his wife and children.
"Miraculously, he survives this injury," said Lt. Chris Cook. "We didn't have much to work on other than we had a really good vehicle description and suspect description."
Luckily, that proved to be enough, Cook said. A tipster helped them identify 29-year-old Andrew Cantu. Police believe he's been in Mexico since the crime happened — that is, until this month.
"We got a call from his attorney, said 'Hey, he wants to turn himself in,'" Cook said. Cantu did just that, turning himself in this week at Arlington Police headquarters, where he faces an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon-bodily injury charge.
Cook said good police work contributed to the break in the case, but most road rage cases don't end up like this, adding that tipsters are vital in these investigations.
"What makes road rage incidents difficult is a lot of times the lack of evidence," he said. One such incident is the 2017 death of teenager Dylan Spaid, which is still unsolved. His girlfriend Kristina Huggins was in the car when he was fatally shot.
"I just cannot believe people are that evil," she told us in 2017.
His case launched Arlington's road rage task force. Last year, it netted 8,000 citations, Cook said. This year, police are saturating the roads and are already up to 6,000 citations.
There is, however, one thing that does seem to be helping solve road rage cases: dash cameras. Arlington Police say more and more people have them and that video can be critical. Cook points to a 2018 case where a man pulled out a gun on Highway 360 and pointed it at another car. Dash camera video led to a quick arrest.
As for Cantu?
"It sounds like his conscience finally got the best of him," Cook said.
With at least half a dozen road rage calls to 911 a week in Arlington, police know their work isn't done.