Akronite killed in I-77 shooting, crash identified; crash victim says she was 'lucky.'
A black SUV caught Ann Shuman's eye as she drove north on Interstate 77 in Green Thursday evening.
What she didn't know was the 23-year-old SUV driver, Marquise Banks, on the other side of the freeway had just been shot multiple times, sending his car careening across the median and into her Mercedes.
The Summit County Medical Examiner's Office identified Banks, who lived in Akron, Friday afternoon. He sustained multiple gunshot wounds and died at 6:52 p.m. Thursday.
"I don't think I heard shooting or tires squealing," said Shuman, 54, who walked away from the scene with bruises and cuts on her left side. "It was like in the videos when you see a car coming toward you, and then he flew over the median."
The shooting and crash marked the second fatal freeway shooting in the Akron area this summer and left I-77 closed for hours.
Summit County Sheriff's Inspector Bill Holland told News 5 Cleveland, a Beacon Journal news partner, that a motive in the shooting is not clear, but detectives did execute a search warrant in New Philadelphia on Friday.
"We're still gathering information at this point because it is an ongoing investigation, and we're pretty confident that it's going very well," Holland told News 5.
What happened in the shooting on I-77?
Summit County sheriff's dispatchers received a 911 call at about 6:15 p.m. regarding a shooting near mile marker 117, a sheriff's press release stated.
Investigators determined the passenger of a pickup truck fired several rounds from a handgun into a black SUV driven by Banks while both vehicles were traveling southbound.
ODOT video shows Banks' SUV in the middle lane with a gray pickup truck in the left lane at 6:13 p.m. As Banks' vehicle pulls aside the pickup, an arm can be seen extending from the pickup's passenger seat toward Banks.
Banks' SUV suddenly veers left behind the truck and plows through a barrier fence in the median, narrowly misses a few vehicles and hits Shuman's Mercedes.
Deputies said Banks was transported to Summa Akron City Hospital by the Green Fire Department. Shuman was transported to the nearby Summa Health Green Emergency Department.
The shooter and the driver of the pickup truck fled the area. The release did not state if investigators believe road rage or another motive was involved.
Deputies ask that anyone with information on the shooting to call detectives at 330-630-6317.
Recounting the fatal incident on I-77 northbound
Settling into her 6 p.m. drive on Thursday, Shuman turned on the cruise control. She was driving to her weekly community band event in Hudson from her accounting job in North Canton when she first saw the black SUV.
"The truck didn't look right," the Springfield Township resident recalled. "I don't know what I did, but I remember hitting the gas to try and get away."
The following seconds were a blur, she said.
The SUV crashed into the driver-side door, forcing the side mirror into the driver's seat with shattered pieces cutting her left arm. Shuman's Mercedes spun and veered to the right off the highway and landed in the grass.
"I must have done a 180 because I was facing southbound I-77," she said. "But after a moment a trucker came by to help me out and I gave him a thumbs up."
Her injuries were minimal, Shuman said — bruises, cuts, neck pain from whiplash and a sore stomach from the seat belt, but no internal damage.
"I was lucky. Someone must have been watching out for me," she said.
Shuman believes she was in the wrong place at the wrong time in the right vehicle.
"I had spilled water on my desk, so I left later than I usually do," she said. "The Mercedes was very sturdy. I almost took our convertible, but didn't because of the rain."
SUV drove through cable barrier
When the black SUV veered left from the southbound I-77 lanes, it crashed through a cable barrier, said Matt Bruning, press secretary for the Ohio Department of Transportation.
Cable barriers are made of metal posts and thick, tensioned wires that can catch vehicles that approach at glancing angles, not head-on like the SUV did on Thursday.
"They are not meant to catch a car going straight through it," Bruning said. "It's not a silver bullet that prevents all crashes. It's one tool of many used to catch vehicles."
Many factors go into how well a cable barrier performs, he explained, including how fast a vehicle approaches the fence, from what angle, the integrity of the fence and the type of vehicle.
"I've seen massive semi-trucks stopped by these barriers and small cars go right through them," he said.
Bruning said there was no prior damage to the cable barrier.
Akron-area road rage freeway shooting
On May 17, George Jensen, 40, of Akron, died after being shot on I-76 in Norton and crashing into the freeway's concrete median during the evening rush hour May 17.
Dacarrei Kinard, of Columbus, has since been indicted by a Summit County grand jury on five felony counts, including two types of murder in the shooting.
A Norton police affidavit filed with the court states a black Camaro that witnesses said was driven by the shooter exited I-76 eastbound at Barber Road and turned north, where Kinard's license plate was spotted by an electronic license plate reader.
The Camaro then entered I-76 westbound and passed the scene.
A search warrant for Kinard's phone records "confirmed the device linked to the phone number Kinard listed with the BMV was present at the scene" and traveled from Columbus to Norton and back. The affidavit mentions video gathered from the Ohio Department of Transportation and the Fred Martin Superstore, a car dealership on Barber Road.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Shooting on I-77 in Green kills Akron man, injures 'lucky' woman
