Plymouth Police Seek Public’s Help in Finding Dashcam Video of Fatal Freeway Shooting

PLYMOUTH, Minn. (AP) — Police searching for a suspect in a suburban Minneapolis freeway shooting that killed a man driving his teenage son home from a baseball game appealed to the public for help Friday, seeking potential dashcam video and offering a reward in the case.

Plymouth police Chief Erik Fadden said detectives are working through traffic camera footage for the area of Tuesday night’s shooting, but rain that evening meant most of the video was poor quality.

Jay Harrison Boughton, 56, died of a gunshot wound to the head. Police said a gunman in an SUV shot Boughton after an apparent traffic altercation on Highway 169 in Plymouth, a northwestern suburb.

Fadden said he wouldn’t describe the shooting as an apparent road rage incident, saying police aren’t sure exactly what happened. He said Boughton and his son were “simply driving” when someone came up behind them quickly, and some sort of “very minor” traffic altercation “escalated quickly.”

“It was simply a senseless act by someone that we will find,” he said.

Fadden asked motorists in the area between 9:30 and 10:30 p.m. with personal dash cameras to review any footage they have that might help. Police were also releasing video clips showing the suspect vehicle, believed to be a late-model Ford Expedition or Chevy Tahoe or Suburban.

After Boughton was shot, his vehicle veered off the highway into a ditch, went through a fence and some trees before it came to rest in the parking lot of an apartment complex. Boughton died later at North Memorial Health Hospital.

Boughton has been remembered by friends as a great father who was well liked. A friend, Tim Browne, told the Star Tribune that Boughton was a coach in the Armstrong Cooper Youth Baseball Association.

Stephen Robinson, another friend, called Boughton “a truly wonderful human being.”

“He was murdered, executed — for doing something most of us do every day, taking your child to an athletic event, sporting event,” Robinson said.