A Plano man has been sentenced to 40 years behind bars for a road rage incident in which he repeatedly shot an Uber driver, nearly killing him.
In March of 2023, the Plano Police Department received multiple reports of gunshots near Parker Road and Ranier Road just before 1 a.m. They also received a call from someone saying, “I’m dying! I’m dying!”
At the scene, law enforcement found the Uber driver barely conscious in the driver’s seat of his car; he had endured multiple gunshot wounds. He had just dropped off a passenger right before the attack, according to Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis’ office.
The victim, Guillermo Martinez, lost vital signs while being transported to Medical City Plano. He was revived by trauma surgeons and spent nearly a month in a coma. Martinez spent three months in the hospital recovering and still requires ongoing medical care.
“The guy shot me six times. I got six shots in me. I got my phone, and I called 9-1-1,” Martinez told FOX 4 in June.
Surveillance footage and witnesses were able to identify 43-year-old Robert Crolley as the man who shot Martinez.
Officials say that throughout the investigation, Crolley told three different stories of what happened that night.
Text messages from Crolley’s phone showed that he told his roommate the following morning that he needed to hide his car in the garage because he had been driving drunk the night before and thought an officer had followed him. However, when detectives interviewed Crolley, he told them that he was not out that night and that other people often drove the car involved.
Once Crolley was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon causing serious bodily injury, he called his roommate from jail. He confessed to his roommate that he shot Martinez but said it was in self-defense after the Uber driver pulled a gun on him. Crolley told his roommate he should be fine so long as he could “convince a jury.”
Throughout the trial, Crolley claimed the shooting was an act of self-defense. But no evidence showed that Martinez ever brandished a gun during their encounter, nor would he have had time to do so.
During Crolley’s sentencing, the jury learned that he had a prior felony conviction for grand larceny and a misdemeanor conviction for simple assault and battery, both in South Carolina.
Crolley was sentenced to 40 years in prison and given a $4,000 fine.
“Road rage is a threat to every driver on our roads, and it has no place in Collin County,” said District Attorney Willis after the sentencing. “This victim didn’t know his attacker and did nothing wrong — he was just doing his job, when he nearly lost his life.”
Earlier this month, a woman shot and critically injured a man in Dallas, as reported by The Dallas Express. The woman was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
On September 15, a 16-year-old boy was shot in Haltom City in a reported road rage incident, leaving the teen in critical condition, as DX reported.
So far this year, Dallas has clocked 4,737 aggravated assault incidents, per the city’s crime analytics dashboard.
Dallas’s approved $5.3 billion budget for the fiscal year 2024-2025, which began in October, includes an increase in funding for the Dallas Police Department. The DPD’s budget rose from $657 million to $719 million, representing a nearly 10% boost. However, despite being woefully short on manpower, the goal is to add only 2% more sworn officers.
DPD has been hindered in its efforts to manage crime in the city because of a chronic shortage of police officers and a budget that is far below other high-crime jurisdictions. The current number of sworn officers in the DPD is roughly 3,000, which falls short of the City’s 2015 recommendation of 4,000 officers. This shortage of police officers contributes to longer response times for emergency calls, as previously reported by DX.