HOUSTON – Nine months ago, a woman said a driver threw paint all over her car in the middle of rush hour traffic as a result of road rage.
All this time later, she said the person who did it never suffered any consequences. She hopes that the overall road rage issues in Houston will fizzle out.
"We're all on the freeway together and this individual was so angry and so out of control and so outraged that he thought that was the best thing to do," said Houston native Lucile Izaguirre.
RAW VIDEO: Paint thrown on car
She was driving on Interstate 45 on the Pierce Elevated, on a hot July summer day, when she saw a man driving erratically.
"He was enraged that the the traffic wasn't moving fast enough, so he was swerving from lane to lane, butting up" to cars, Izaguirre said.
She said the man was on the phone, but when he hung up, she said she noticed his driving was even worse than before. Izaguirre said he had been flailing his arms and driving aggressively in traffic that was 20-25 mph.
"When he saw there was an opportunity to get behind me, he moved over into my lane," Izaguirre said. "When I saw him behind me, I immediately became alarmed, and I sped up the best I could. The traffic was stopped just a few feet away."
Then she said the driver did the unthinkable.
"He crept up really slow on the side, and I thought he was going to shoot me--His window came down really, really slow, and he just flung this thing on my vehicle and splattered the paint all over the windshield," Izaguirre said.
Gray paint splattered all over her car. It was caught on her dash camera. The paint can, she said, cracked her windshield and moon roof.
"The dispatcher said do not turn on your windshield wipers," Izaguirre said.
Izaguirre said the situation could have been worse. Now, Izaguirre said she is still paying insurance and paint remnants remain on certain areas of her car.
"The chemical in the paint has eaten away at the foam around the window so now it leaks water," Izaguirre said.
Perhaps the most unnerving part for Izaguirre was that nine months later, no one has faced any consequences despite that she said she tracked down the license plate number of the truck.
She believed the owner of a local paint company was behind the alleged road rage incident. Houston police took her case and assigned an investigator who worked with Izaguirre to track the man down.
"The person had become familiar with the police's cellphone number and stopped answering the phone," Izaguirre said.
Izaguirre said the process was harrowing for her. She said the last update she received was in February.
KPRC reached out to police, who said that the man eventually came in to give his statement of what happened and denied it was him driving. HPD officials said because the video does not show who did it, there was little they could do to move the investigation forward.
However, police are still collecting evidence and witness statements on what happened and if they get any more information, they can reactivate the case.
For now, Izaguirre said she is unfairly stuck paying the bill. She hopes her story is a word of caution to drivers. She hopes drivers decide to make more responsible decisions.
"There is definitely a huge problem with the amount of angry people on the road. You're in Houston --there's traffic. There's nothing you can do," she said.