By RICHARD ESSEX
WISH-TV | wishtv.com
Almost every single day, someone on the interstate in Marion County pulls out a gun and, almost once a week, someone pulls out a gun and pulls the trigger.
Just before 2 p.m. Sunday, a caller to 911 reported a man in a Nissan van was having a medical issue. Police arrived to find Luis Martinez, 52, Noblesville, slumped over the steering wheel in the driver’s seat. Martinez had been driving north on Interstate 65 when his van veered onto the shoulder and came to a stop on the West Street/Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street exit.
The Indiana Department of Transportation traffic camera caught the last half mile of his drive.
INDOT cameras cover nearly every mile of interstate within Marion County, but the video is not recorded or saved by the state.
Sgt. John Perrine of the Indiana State Police said Monday, “Right now we don’t have a clear motive. All we know is that there was a homicide, and a man lost his life on I-65.”
About the need for using the state’s cameras more effectively, he added, “We are still looking for optional technology that may be out there that would be of assistance to the investigations.”
I-Team 8 has reported extensively on interstate shootings. According to police, in the past two years, central Indiana has recorded an increase of more than 200 percent in interstate shootings.
In 2019, state police investigators, on average, had one case a month. Now, they have more than one a week.
The latest numbers from state police show 54 reported interstate shootings since Jan. 1, and another 213 incidents where someone displayed a gun but didn’t pull the trigger.
“For context, in 2018 and 2019, each of those two years, we only had nine interstate shootings, and the following year we had in the 20s, and then, in 2021, it shot up significantly,” Perrine said.
In 2022, 66 interstate shootings were recorded in Marion County.
Police have been alarmed at how easily drivers will pull a gun.
Investigators have asked that drivers on that section of I-65 about 1:45 p.m. Sunday who have dashcam video to contact the state police post in Indianapolis at 317-899-8577 or call Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana at (317) 262-8477.