Freeway Tailgater Shoots and Kills Man in Slow Car

Rick Lane Bynum, who had taken his 3-year-old son out on a Father’s Day visit Saturday night, was fatally wounded by a tailgating driver who pulled around the car in which they were riding and shot Bynum twice in the neck.

The 24-year-old father from the City of Orange died before help could arrive, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said Sunday. Investigators said it appeared that the tailgating driver was angered by the slower moving vehicle being driven by Bynum’s girlfriend on the Santa Ana Freeway.

Sheriff’s deputies appealed for the public’s help in finding the killer at a news conference Sunday afternoon in a Santa Fe Springs’ restaurant parking lot where the dead man’s girlfriend had driven to call for help.

Tailgater Flashed Lights

Authorities said the shooting occurred at about 9:45 p.m. Saturday as Bynum’s girlfriend, Sandra Leigh Tait, 18, was driving south in the fast lane of the Santa Ana Freeway near Carmenita Road.

Tait told investigators that the tailgater flashed his lights at her, but that traffic would not permit her to move over. When she slowed, the driver pulled alongside Tait’s car and fired into the window, striking Bynum.

Horrified, Tait drove off the freeway at Valley View Avenue to a Denny’s Restaurant on Firestone Boulevard and telephoned for help. Investigators said that Bynum was dead when help arrived. Neither Tait nor Bynum’s son, who was not identified, were injured.

No Motive

There appeared to be no motive other than the assailant’s apparent anger at the slower car, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Van Mosley.

Investigators described the suspect as a dark-haired, mustachioed man of either Anglo or Latino descent. Tait described the car as a yellow Toyota, 1980-82, possibly with primer spots on the right-rear quarter panel.

Police noted that a similar freeway tailgating and shooting incident on the Riverside Freeway last Aug. 22 ended in the death of Corona Police Officer Patricia Dwyer of the Riverside County community of Woodcrest.

The 45-year-old Dwyer, who also was a passenger, was killed by a shotgun blast fired into the van as her husband was driving on the freeway in Corona, rushing to get their injured son to a hospital. A 21-year-old family friend, Wendy Varga, who was sitting next to the off-duty officer in the back seat, also was wounded by the shotgun blast.

In the Corona incident, police said Dwyer’s husband was cut off by a car that pulled into his lane. Dwyer followed the slower vehicle closely, then pulled around it and hurled an empty soda can out the window as he passed. The slower vehicle then followed the van for several miles, finally shooting into it.

Corona police appealed for the public’s help in finding the gunman, and a $10,000 reward was offered. Four days after the freeway shooting, an informant’s telephone tip led authorities to Harold Harvey Hawks, a 26-year-old sheet-metal worker from Pomona. Hawks, who told investigators that he did fire his 12-gauge shotgun in an effort to scare the van’s driver, has pleaded not guilty to murder in the case, which is pending trial in Riverside County.

On Sunday, investigators asked that anyone with information on the Saturday night shooting in Santa Fe Springs contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau at (213) 974-4341.

Times staff writers Bill Billiter and David Reyes contributed to this story.