SOUTH BEND, Ind. – A man is accused of shooting out the windows of an SUV belonging to a state representative.
According to court documents, the incident happened n Dec. 8 on the St. Joseph Valley Parkway.
State Rep. Jake Teshka told police he was driving a GMC Acadia with his two children, ages 3 and 6, in the back seat when a maroon Dodge Caravan came up behind him at a high rate of speed.
Teshka, a Republican who represents House District 7, was in an exit ramp and attempting to merge into the southbound lanes of the bypass. The van passed him on the left side; both vehicles merged onto the bypass.
Not long after that, Teshka was going south in the left lane when he noticed the Caravan in the right lane. Traffic ahead on the right began slowing down and Teshka attempted to pass the Caravan. He told police he’d observed “unsafe” driving on the part of the van’s driver and wanted to pass it.
But the van wouldn’t let him get by, and the two vehicles were “traveling parallel.” Teshka saw the driver lower his driver’s side window and expected him to yell something. Instead, Teshka heard a pair of loud pops, according to court documents.
Teshka pulled over his SUV. When police arrived to investigate, they noticed the front driver’s side and front passenger’s side windows had shattered. There was a visible bullet hole on the front passenger door.
Police said it appeared a bullet went through the passenger’s side window just inches away from Teshka’s head. Teshka suffered an injury to his head from the shattered glass, police said.
Investigators recovered a bullet from the SUV and found a casing in the southbound lanes of the bypass.
Investigators said surveillance video backed up Teshka’s account of the “unsafe” driving behavior.
Edmande Hill, 51, was eventually charged in the case. License plate cameras tracked the van to a local rental company. Hill had rented the van on the day of the shooting, according to court documents.
When police interviewed Hill, he told them he’d rented a maroon van that day and had been in the area at the time of the shooting.
He recalled seeing the windows of a car next to him shattering and blamed it on two men who were “standing on the side of the bypass in some bushes shooting.” According to court documents, Hill “speculated that they were possibly hunting rabbits.”
Hill is charged with attempted battery by means of a deadly weapon and criminal recklessness, according to the St. Joseph County Prosecutor’s Office.
