Road-rage victim still hearing sound of pickup crashing into her car five days later

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This article was published 22/12/2020 (2111 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As news of her road-rage ordeal continues to spread here and abroad, Kiana Jobo says she’s just happy for the opportunity to squeeze something positive from the most terrifying day of her life.

“Obviously nobody wants their face or name plastered everywhere for such a horrific incident but I’m also glad it’s getting the publicity it’s getting because I think people need to be aware,” said the 25-year-old Red River College business administration student.

“It does bring awareness to the serious nature of this crime,” she said. “It’s not just a person having road rage — it was a vicious, relentless act of violence.”

Jobo made national headlines after she posted a video on social media documenting her encounter with an enraged driver last week. On Tuesday, her story reached an even broader audience after her video was posted on the Los Angeles-based tabloid website TMZ.

“For my mental-health purposes, I’m trying to stay away from reading too much into it,” she said. “I’m trying to kind of sift through the good and the bad at the same time.”

Jobo had just finished writing her last exam of the semester and was out running errands with her father last Thursday, including making funeral arrangements for her grandparents who had died from COVID-19, when she made a left turn from Sargent Avenue onto Milt Stegall Drive, angering the male driver of a white Chevrolet pickup truck.

“He was going the opposite direction in the median lane, so I was turning left and I guess I was in his lane,” Jobo said Tuesday.

The pickup driver began aggressively following Jobo, at which point she told her father to pull out his phone and record the man’s licence plate number.

The man proceeded to ram Jobo’s car three times in rapid succession on Milt Stegall Drive and again on Portage Avenue near Polo Park, causing her to crash into a median.

Jobo estimates the chase lasted 10 minutes before she turned in to the RCMP’s Portage Avenue headquarters for safety.

“Every time I close my eyes I can feel the exact feeling of fear I had at that moment. I just have this constant anxiety that is causing me to feel so mentally unsafe.” – Kiana Jobo

“I don’t know why he did this, I don’t know why it happened,” she said. “There’s nothing I could have done to prevent or avoid this, other than maybe not turning left at that moment…. This was so random and so personal at the same time.”

Nearly a week later, Jobo says she can still hear the sound of the driver crashing into her car.

“It feels like it just happened,” she said. “Every time I close my eyes I can feel the exact feeling of fear I had at that moment. I just have this constant anxiety that is causing me to feel so mentally unsafe.”

Jobo flatly rejected the suggestion of a road-rage expert that the driver’s actions could be related to bottled-up pandemic frustration.

“No, absolutely not,” she said. “I have been dealing with frustrations from this pandemic as well, from being laid off, from having to do full-time courses online, to losing the closest people in my family to me. You don’t see me out here ramming people. There is nothing that justifies the situation, nothing at all.”

Police have arrested a 57-year-old man and charged him with one count of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle. He has been released on a promise to appear in court.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca