In a press release, the Utah Department of Public Safety announced the arrest of Daniel Bodon, who allegedly shot at another motorist on June 5 while traveling north on I-15 near the Layton Hills Mall. A press conference was held later Thursday to discuss the incident, the arrest and the danger posed by road rage.

While partly to detail how the June 5 incident was solved, Thursday’s press conference was also called to bring attention to what officials describe as a rise in road rage incidents.

“We’re incredibly proud of our state troopers and our agents and their efforts and their ability to bring the person involved in this to justice,” said Col. Michael Rapich. “But we really want to bring significant attention to the fact that this is unacceptable behavior. When we’re talking about road rage, the things we’re talking about is we’re talking about direct, aggressive actions while driving on a freeway or driving on a roadway directed at another person or vehicle.”

He said aggressive actions have no place on roadways. Just one day before the Layton shooting, a road rage-related crash killed two in Eagle Mountain. Peterson Drew Matheson was charged with two felony counts of manslaughter and one misdemeanor count of reckless driving due to a collision with another vehicle.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

Matheson allegedly collided with a Porsche 911 — killing Rodney Michal Salm, 48, and Michaela Himmleberger, 47, of Salt Lake County — when his vehicle crossed the center line on State Route 73 after ramming a separate vehicle in what police said, at the time and since, was a road rage incident.

“When we’re talking about things that are happening on the freeway, at no time … is a physical confrontation going to make that better,” Rapich said. “At no time is brandishing a firearm from a vehicle at another vehicle or another person acceptable or is that going to improve the situation at all.”

According to Rapich, road rage isn’t currently defined in state statute.

“The best place we can actually gather data, because road rage itself isn’t currently defined as a crime — it is defined in crash reporting statistics,” he said. “Over the last six years, between 700-800 different crashes where an investigating officer got on scene, based on all of the information they were able to collect, (they) determined that crash was directly contributed to by road rage or aggressive driving.”

He said in the three years prior to 2020, the state averaged 10-15 fatalities per year in such crashes. From 2020-2022, he said, that average rose to 27 fatalities. Serious injuries reportedly have also risen in these accidents.

Capt. Troy Denney of the State Bureau of Investigation also spoke Thursday about the investigation into the shooting and the tools involved in Bodon’s apprehension, including mapping technology and surveillance footage.

Denney said the incident was alarming because it could happen to any driver for any minor infraction on the road.

“I would dare say there isn’t a single driver on the roads today that hasn’t inadvertently cut somebody off or missed somebody in their blind spot,” he said. “In this particular incident, an 18-year-old driver was seriously injured, and that could’ve been any of our loved ones.”

Daily Herald reporter Harrison Epstein contributed to this story.