A truck driver remains hospitalized more than a week after he was shot multiple times by two Missouri State Highway Patrol (MSHP) troopers.
Investigators claim Tayland Rahim, 27, of Gladstone, Missouri, drove to the agency’s local headquarters with an assault-style rifle and fired several rounds around 9:40 p.m. on Jan. 4 in the Troop A parking lot in Lee’s Summit.
Sgt. Andy Bell, a spokesman for the Highway Patrol, said Rahim was shot after he disobeyed troopers’ commands to drop his weapon.
“The suspect started shooting randomly and into the ground in the parking lot, and that’s what prompted the two troopers to exit the building and the third trooper, who was in the parking lot, to warn and advise the radio dispatch personnel to seek shelter,” Bell told FreightWaves.
Bell said investigators are unsure of the truck driver’s motive since they have been unable to interview Rahim, who is listed in stable condition at a Kansas City-area hospital.
“He obviously wasn’t there to ask for directions,” Bell said.
Court documents show that Rahim’s only interaction with Missouri law enforcement was in October 2019, when he was ticketed by a Troop A officer in its Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Division at a weigh station for being 2,360 pounds overweight. The ticket, a misdemeanor, cost Rahim $135.
At the time, Rahim was driving a 2020 International tractor for Swift Transportation, a unit of Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings Inc. (NYSE: KNX), according to court filings.
David Berry, vice president of Swift Transportation, told FreightWaves on Thursday that Rahim “quit Swift” in September of 2020.
Attempted ‘ambush’
Sgt. Bill Lowe, a spokesman for the Highway Patrol, called the shooting at Troop A headquarters an attempted “ambush” — the first of its kind in Missouri.
“I will say coming to the troop headquarters is a little different because this has never happened in the history of the Highway Patrol,” Lowe said in a recent press conference. “He was set to do some harm, set to do something bad.”
Prosecutors have not filed charges in the case since investigators haven’t been able to interview Rahim, Bell said.
“We will continue to analyze any and all evidence and if and when he is released, he will be immediately put under a 24-hour investigative hold, which allows us to submit the evidence we have to a judge for an arrest warrant,” Bell told FreightWaves.
Investigators seized a cell phone, a rifle magazine with 30 rounds and two live rounds from a black Ford F-150 pickup truck that was registered to one of Rahim’s relatives, according to a search warrant.
Investigators also searched a house in Gladstone where Rahim lived and found three guns and ammunition, Bell said.
“This person drove to our facility, exited his vehicle with a multi-round rifle and pulled the trigger multiple times,” Bell told FreightWaves. “We just don’t know the motive at this point.”
FreightWaves’ true-crime podcast, Long-Haul Crime Log
Check out FreightWaves’ true-crime podcast, Long-Haul Crime Log, which delves into the investigation of Swift truck driver Tayland Rahim and his alleged “ambush” on the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s headquarters, a nearly 70-year-old case, titled the Turnpike Phantom, where two truck drivers were murdered and another was shot in July of 1953, and the unsolved homicide of Indiana truck driver Michael Boeglin, who was shot multiple times and his rig was set on fire in June of 2014 in Detroit.
Click for more articles by FreightWaves Senior Editor Clarissa Hawes.
Trucking groups condemn Capitol violence
Oregon man sentenced in $3.2 million fraud scheme targeting trucking investors
Ex-trucking executive accused of bilking $14 million from investor