DPS director: Phoenix Interstate 10 shootings ‘absolutely domestic terrorism’

Sep 10, 2015, 10:55 AM Updated: 3:30 pm

This Saturday, Aug. 29, 2015 photo provided by The Arizona Department of Public Safety shows a SUV window shattered by a gun shot in Phoenix. Authorities say shots were fired at several vehicles on Interstate 10 in Phoenix over the weekend, with bullets striking three vehicles and injuring one person. (The Arizona Department of Public Safety via AP)

(The Arizona Department of Public Safety via AP)

PHOENIX — The director of the Arizona Department of Public Safety said a string of shootings along Interstate 10 in Phoenix are “absolutely domestic terrorism.”

“This game, if you will, that someone or some people are playing is going to end in death,” DPS Director Col. Frank Milstead told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Bruce St. James and Pamela Hughes on Thursday morning.

Nearly a dozen shootings along I-10 have been confirmed by the highway patrol since Aug. 29. Two more incidents were reported Thursday morning.

Only one person has been injured in the shootings, but Milstead said someone will eventually be killed if “this insanity continues.”

There has been some confusion over the terms used by law enforcement to describe the incidents. Some are described as shootings, while others are left as a “vehicle hit by a projectile.” Milstead said the term projectile is often used when a round cannot be found. It’s also applicable for pellets and BBs, which Milstead said aren’t any less lethal.

“Those rounds from a pellet rifle travel at about 1,200 feet per second,” he said. “They don’t have as much mass, so they don’t have as much energy, but that’s the same velocity as a 9 mm handgun.”

Hundreds of thousands of drivers travel the freeway daily, but the shootings have some rethinking their routes.

“I think it’s a personal judgment call,” Milstead, who drives on I-10 daily, said of drivers continuing to use the highway. He said he would ask his daughter to avoid driving on it at night or in the early-morning hours.

DPS has rolled out 24-hour patrols in the wake of the shootings with a visibly increased presence along I-10. Despite the spike in law enforcement, Milstead said the public has to remain vigilant.

“(The shooter is) hanging out in the area,” he said. “They’re driving, they’re on foot, they’re on bicycle – something is a conveyance them from to get Point A to Point B – and they’ve got to be spending time in the area, especially in the early-morning hours.”

Milstead urged people who spot anything suspicious — a person out of the ordinary in a neighborhood, a driver who is pulled over but doesn’t appear stranded, someone carrying a large package — to call 911 or the DPS hotline at 602-644-5805.

The director signed off of the interview with a message for the shooter or shooters:

“Stop. Turn yourself in. Stop.”