Nevada Man Gets Prison Sentence For Road Rage

Juan Jose Gastelum-Ruiz Jr. has been sentenced to 4 ½ years in prison for aggravated assault during a road rage incident.

Ruiz was involved in the road rage incident outside of a residence near Bullhead City in the Tri-State area of Nevada. According to Ruiz, the victim got out of his car to confront Ruiz. When Ruiz saw that the victim was much bigger than him, Ruiz shot at the man to scare him. Two shots were fired in the victim's direction. There were no injuries to report.

Ruiz was initially arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, drive-by shooting and discharging his firearm near a residence. Since then, though, the drive-by shooting and the discharging of a firearm charges were dismissed.

Superior Court Judge Robert Moon did not charge Ruiz with attempted murder because Ruiz was shooting over the victim and was not intending to kill. His attorney asked for the minimum sentence for this crime because Ruiz did in fact have a lack of felony criminal history. Even though Ruiz had a past history of being a gang member, Moon did take into account that he had minimal criminal history.

If Ruiz was tried and convicted of the drive-by shooting charge, he could have faced up to 21 years in prison. For the aggravated assault charge that was dropped, Ruiz would have been sentenced up to 15 years.

In court, Ruiz apologized to the victims who were still too traumatized to testify at the trial.