A father of two in Oregon was shot and killed during a suspected road rage incident that was allegedly sparked after the 45-year-old splashed the window of the suspected killer’s BMW.
On Wednesday 13 July, Dennis Anderson, 45, was driving home from the beach with his wife, Brandy Goldsbury, along Highway 18 in Polk County, Oregon, located about 80 miles southwest of Portland.
While the couple were driving along the highway, an unidentified man in a black BMW 3 Series car began following closely behind them, appearing to want to pass them.
Before letting the car go around them, Ms Goldsbury relayed toThe Oregonian how her husband had sprayed windshield wiper fluid onto their own car to clear the front window of some dirt that had kicked up during their drive.
“I was just like ‘ignore him, he’s having a bad day,’” she told the Oregon-based news outlet.
The car then passed around the couple’s car, and they assumed the worst was behind them. That was until they came upon a rest stop a few miles down the road where they saw the same black BMW parked.
“We drove by it, and then it got behind us,” Ms Goldsbury said to The Oregonian. Once the highway merged into a single lane, she says, the driver again began to erratically weave behind them, getting so close to the back at one point it was “almost like it was going to hit us”.
“And then it would go into oncoming traffic and kind of swerve towards us, like trying to push us to the side of the forest,” she added.
After the car doing this dangerous swerve multiple times, Ms Goldsbury told her husband that they should pull the car over and dial 911.
“We decided to stop and call 911, pulled over, Dennis got out of the car, I was calling 911, and the people in the vehicle started shooting at us and shot Dennis and our car,” said Ms Goldsbury in an interview with KPTV.
The BMW had reportedly pulled up parallel beside Anderson and his wife and then she recalls the last thing her husband said to her was: “Oh my god, they shot me”.
Anderson was pronounced dead at the scene, KOIN.com reported.
Oregon State Police later released an image of the suspected vehicle involved in the deadly shooting on Tuesday, describing it as a black BMW series 3 with a round emblem on the hood.
The OSP said the suspected driver of the car is described as being a young man with a medium complexion who they believe to be less than 25 years old with short, dark hair and a small stature.
Anderson, a father of two teenage daughters and a role model to his wife’s son from a previous marriage, had recently quit his job to spend more time with his family, something that Ms Goldsbury says was the core of his identity.
“He’s one of those pushover dads,” she told The Oregonian. “They would ask for something absolutely outrageous, and he would be like ‘no’ and then I would turn around and he’d be doing it, making it happen for them.”
In a GoFundMe set up for the family to help with the costs of the funeral and the loss of their father’s income, the organiser described how instead of remembering Anderson for the incomprehensible and cruel death he suffered in his final moments, they’d rather people know that he was “a kind and funny man who wanted nothing more than to make others laugh”.
“Brandy describes him as a ‘goofball,’ a committed and dedicated father who loved his children above all else,” wrote family friend Danielle Vermette. “He would do anything for his family, even delivering pizza for extra money during a pandemic.”
Police are asking anyone with information about the suspected driver or the car suspected to be involved in the deadly shooting to come forward with information by calling the Oregon State Police at 1-800-452-7888.
