Frank Martin Lawrence III (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office)
A 35-year-old man in Arizona will spend more than two decades behind bars for killing another man in a 2020 road rage incident in which he followed a couple home after they honked their horn at him, then punched the girlfriend in the face and ran down her boyfriend in his truck.
A Maricopa County judge last month ordered Frank Martin Lawrence III to serve a sentence of 25 years in a state correctional facility for the slaying of James William Ackerman Jr., authorities announced.
Lawrence had pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree murder for killing Ackerman as well as one count of aggravated assault for hitting Ackerman’s girlfriend, Carlyn Bui.
According to a news release from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, the incident took place on the night of Jan. 11, 2020. Bui was driving and Ackerman was in the passenger seat as the two were on their way home. As Bui was preparing to make a left turn, Lawrence, who was driving a white Dodge pickup truck, “veered into her lane causing Bui to honk.”
This response apparently enraged Lawrence.
Prosecutors say that Lawrence then followed Bui and Ackerman all the way back to the apartment they shared on Alma School Road, which is about 20 miles southeast of Phoenix.
After following the couple home, Lawrence “drove donuts in the parking lot” and then got out of his vehicle and began “punching Bui in the face.” Lawrence then got back in his car and started to drive away.
Ackerman got out of the couple’s car and “attempted to record the defendant’ license plate,” prosecutors said.
Lawrence then pulled a U-turn and drove by the couple again only to turn pull a second U-turn, this time driving his truck directly into Ackerman, intentionally “striking and killing him.”
Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said that violent road rage incidents such as this cannot be tolerated in the state any longer.
“This defendant’s out-of-control behavior cost the life of an innocent victim,” Mitchell said in a statement following the sentencing hearing. “Road rage is a criminal offense that happens all too often in our state.”
The prosecutor’s office also highlighted a 2023 Forbes Advisor survey which determined that Arizona had more incidents involving confrontational drivers than any other state in the nation.
According to the Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, the state had 622 suspected “road rage incidents” in 2022.