Hurst Police are looking for the person who shot and killed a woman in an apparent road rage shooting along East Loop 820 Monday night.
According to police, officers were called to assist a shooting victim on the 1400 block of West Hurst Boulevard at about 9:15 p.m. Officers arrived to find a 37-year-old woman with a gunshot wound to her head.
The woman was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth where she died just after 2 a.m. She was identified by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office as Paola Nunez Linares.
"I need him caught, I need him prosecuted, I need him in prison. I need him to know he didn't just fire a gun into a car, 'The end.' He killed someone who's not like anyone. He killed someone who fought so hard to be here, who loved my kids, that loved me, someone who's building a life and a career for herself. Someone who had nothing to do with anything. Someone who was a passenger of the person he was mad at. I want him to rot," said Zane Jones, the victim's husband.
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Jones told police they were driving northbound on Loop 820 on their way to work when they were involved in an incident with another driver.
Jones talked to NBC 5 Tuesday morning and said they were behind someone driving slow in the right lane when they used the left lane to pass. As they were driving, he said that's when another car drove up on their bumper.
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"As I was passing that car, another car behind me sped up, going like 90 mph, and was like on my bumper. So I completed the pass, moved over to the right lane and the other car sped up to me and almost like crashed into my car, got very close and then backed away. And I flipped them off," said Jones. "She [his wife] always told me not to flip people off because you never know."
He said he thought the person was also flipping him off, but now realized it was a gun.
"He slowed down a little bit and shot through the back left window into the back of her head, and I didn't know that she'd been hit in the back of the head at all. She ducked, I thought, and I ducked too, and I said, 'Get out, stay down, I'm getting off.' He shot again and it went through my headrest, through the windshield," explained Jones.
Jones said he exited the highway and said the other driver shot again and continued straight onto 820. Jones pulled into a Shell gas station which was nearby on Hurst Boulevard.
“I said, 'Call 911,' She didn't answer me and I looked up and that's when I saw she wasn't ducking, she was slumped," explained the distraught husband.
He said when first responders arrived, he helped them get his wife out of their minivan. She was still breathing but unresponsive.
Jones said he kept talking to his wife while medics worked on her.
"She's breathing. I kept talking to her and told her I love her and [am] so proud of her, she's going to be OK," said Jones, as he choked up.
His wife was taken to the hospital. Jones said police took him to the station to test his hands to make sure he wasn't the one who shot the gun, which he said he was told was standard procedure.
Jones said once he arrived at the hospital, Nunez was on life support and he was told his wife was brain-dead after the shooting. She died at about 2:15 a.m.
He said he remembered telling his wife that he believed she would be safer in North Texas than in her native Guatemala where she'd been robbed five times.
"She's been mugged five times at gunpoint in Guatemala and I sat here and assured her this is a much safer place to be, and that may be, but it wasn't for her," said Jones. "Thirty-five years she survived in Guatemala. Took her two years to get killed here, at no fault of her own."
Nunez's mother Ana Linares arrived from Guatemala Tuesday.
Sitting next to Jones, she echoed sentiments that she thought her daughter would be safer in the U.S.
“It’s like an irony of life,” said Linares.
Jones said they met in a Facebook fan group for one of their favorite bands, Switchfoot. Jones said they hit it off and kept talking. She came to America to visit and after several months, she moved to North Texas. They got married shortly after and had been husband and wife for about a year and a half.
"She just recently got her driver's license and a green card. She was so proud, she's so proud of it. She worked so hard to get it," cried Jones.
He said they worked at Kelly Moore Paints together. He's an industrial maintenance technician and she was a training coordinator who built standard operating procedures and training documentation, according to Jones.
"She moved up so quickly. She was so professional and positive and had great ideas and within three months she had a desk and a raise and she was really building her life here. We worked together, hung out together, she’s my best friend," said Jones.
He said he knows someone knows something. He and Linares are asking anyone with information to come forward.
"If you're so mad you can shoot someone when something bad happens on the road, don't bring a gun with you. If you get so fired up that you feel like you could fire a shot, don't be armed. If that's your temperament and you know yourself, don't put yourself and other people in that situation by being armed," said Jones.
“They don’t know the harm they do to other people. Right? They have no idea. I truly hope he will be caught and put in prison. He cannot be on the streets because something like this can happen again," said Linares.
Police said the shooter's vehicle was described as a small, dark-colored older model car. No other description has been provided. No suspects have been identified and no arrests have been announced.
Anyone with information, including video or images, is asked to contact Detective C. Jackson at 817-788-7179.
A GoFundMe to help cover the costs of Nunez's funeral expenses and travel for her family to and from Guatemala has been established.
