Trucker Found Guilty in I-83 Shooting
A Baltimore County jury found an Illinois truck driver guilty Friday of attempted murder for shooting into a passing car on I-83.
Christian Ramos, 29, of Melrose Park, Ill., was originally charged with three counts of attempted first-degree murder, one count for each person in the car, which included a toddler. The shooting happened on I-83 near the Shawan Road exit on June 18, 2025.
A jury deliberated about an hour and 15 minutes Friday before returning its verdicts: guilty of one count of attempted first-degree murder for the driver and two counts of attempted second-degree murder for the mother and child who were in the back seat. Ramos was also found guilty of reckless endangerment and weapons offenses.
Sentencing will be July 1.
Maryland State Police said Ramos was driving a tractor-trailer around 11:45 p.m. when he fired one shot from a handgun into the passenger side of a 2016 Toyota Prius. The bullet struck the passenger-side window, traveled across the center console and lodged into the driver’s seat. No one in the car was struck.
Ramos’ defense attorney, Evan Rollins, argued the prosecution did not meet its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, noting that investigators didn’t recover a bullet in the car and didn’t perform tests on gunshot residue or DNA samples.
“If I had to put a theme to this case, the theme would be, ‘Why?'’’ Rollins said in closing arguments. “What sense does this make?”
If Ramos had wanted to kill the people in the Prius, he could have fired more shots or run the car off the road, Rollins said.
The defense attorney also said the state offered no proof that someone else wasn’t in the truck and made no attempt at establishing a motive. And he pointed out that the Prius driver was not able to identify Ramos as the person who fired the shot.
“Is there a single one of you here today who can say what happened inside that truck?” Rollins asked jurors.
State’s Attorney Joseph Dominick told jurors the law doesn’t require the state to determine a motive. He said sometimes people ‘just do bad things.”
“This act is so senseless. There is no reason for it," Dominick said. "And to try to figure out a motive would be futile."
The case was largely circumstantial but was bolstered by dash camera footage of the shooting.
The driver, Muhammad Popalzai, 47, said his family was driving from New Jersey to Washington, D.C., and saw a commercial truck in front of them driving erratically, weaving in and out of lanes.
He said he was trying to pass the tractor-trailer when the shot was fired.
His wife and their 2½-year-old daughter were riding in the back seat of the car, he said.
The footage showed the car behind the semi in the left lane. The truck, a Tag Trans Inc. tractor-trailer, then moved to the right lane and the Prius sped up to pass it. Just as the drivers were side-by-side, a loud sound could be heard on the video.
Afterwards, the Prius followed the truck as it traveled south on I-83 and then west onto the I-695 Beltway. Popalzai’s wife called 911 to report the incident and give police the license plate number.
MSP officers tracked down Ramos the following day at a truck stop in Elkton in Cecil County. Inside the cab of the tractor, officers found a gun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. They also found spent cartridge casings in the truck’s dashboard and a cupholder.
Other spent casings were found in boxes in the cab.
Police did not recover a bullet from the car seat. An evidence technician said the bullet was so deeply embedded in the foam that retrieving it would have ruined the seat and made the car undrivable.
Dominick said the hole in the window was obviously a bullet hole and the sound heard on the video was definitely from a gun.
“That is a gunshot. It’s not a blown tire. It’s not a firecracker. It’s not a rock. It is a gunshot," he said in closings.