A now-deceased State Department employee killed a woman and injured three others during a road rage incident on Sunday in Virginia.
Speaking with Washington, D.C. station WRC, witness Sarah Kober said she and her daughter were driving home when Jared Llamado, 32, sideswiped them with his red SUV as he was chasing after another car.
“I told my mom, I’m like, ‘Hey, let’s pull over,’ and she was like, ‘For what? The guy’s kept going,'” Kober’s daughter, Jennifer Paxton, said. “I mean, we watched him weave in and out of traffic following another car.”
That car contained four people: Michele Adams, 39, Dana Bonnell, 36, Mary C. Flood, 37, and Heather Miller, 40.
Kober and her daughter eventually found themselves right behind his SUV. That’s when they saw Llamado get out of his vehicle and start stabbing the women in the other vehicle.
Watch some of that below (*EXTREMELY GRAPHIC CONTENT):
FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICER SUSPECT in LETHAL ROAD RAGE INCIDENT
Jared Llamado killed a woman and a dog, and injured multiple other women, in a road rage incident outside Washington, DC
Llamado was shot and killed by a Virginia State trooper pic.twitter.com/342u8dLzxt
— RT (@RT_com) March 3, 2026
“I didn’t know if he was going to come back at us. We did not know, and we were terrified,” Kober recalled. “That lady needed help, and we ran because we didn’t know what else to do. It’s my daughter. I didn’t want us to get stabbed, so I just told her, ‘Run! Run!'”
“You know, people go crazy, you hear about it, but I’ve never seen somebody go crazy like that,” she added.
Adams wound up dying in the attack. So did a dog reportedly owned by Llamado.
The altercation only ended when a state trooper killed Llamado at approximately 1:17 pm after he confronted the trooper with his knife.
“When the trooper arrived on scene, he was confronted by a male suspect carrying a knife,” according to a press release from the Virginia State Police. “The trooper then shot the suspect in self-defense.”
“The suspect, Jared Llamado, 32, of McLean, Va., was transported to the hospital with serious injuries. Llamado later succumbed to those injuries. The trooper was not injured,” the release continued.
UPDATE: VSP Investigating Stabbings, Officer-Involved Shooting on Beltway
FAIRFAX – The Virginia State Police Bureau…
Posted by Virginia State Police on Monday, March 2, 2026
Llamado has been identified as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer who’d “worked as a diplomatic technology officer at the State Department since September 2024,” according to The Daily Beast.
“We are aware of the tragic incident that involved a Foreign Service Officer and occurred on Sunday, March 1, in Fairfax County, Virginia,” a State Department spokesperson said. “We extend our deepest condolences to all those affected by this tragedy.”
According to the Virginia State Police, the road rage incident happened after a crash on Interstate 495 southbound.
Road rage incidents in Virginia have become an increasingly common issue on the state’s busy highways and interstates. Recent years have seen a surge in aggressive driving behaviors escalating into dangerous confrontations, often involving firearms or other weapons.
UPDATE 4 BELTWAY VIOLENCE: The not-so-clear traffic-cam video I posted yesterday of Virginia State Police arriving at the scene of the Beltway stabbings appears to show Jared Llamado being shot and falling to the ground. This happened moments after the first trooper pulled up. I… https://t.co/TseDikVppR pic.twitter.com/CYbskGt7ta
— Dave Statter (@STATter911) March 2, 2026
The Virginia State Police reported 236 shooting incidents on highways from January 2023 to October 2025, though not all were directly tied to road rage. While the numbers declined slightly — 99 in 2023, 86 in 2024, and 51 in 2025 — the potential for tragedy remains high.
Virginia ranks among the worst states for confrontational driving, with surveys showing high rates of drivers experiencing tailgating, excessive honking, obscene gestures, and threats.
Over half of Virginia motorists report encounters where someone exited their vehicle to yell or fight, and nearly a quarter face road rage very frequently, especially on city streets and major routes like I-495, I-64, and I-81.
Other cases include road rage shootings leading to life sentences, such as a 2024 incident in James City County, where a suspect received two consecutive life terms plus additional years for firing at victims.
Under Virginia law, aggressive driving — combining traffic violations with intent to harass, intimidate, or injure — is a Class 2 misdemeanor (up to 6 months jail, $1,000 fine), escalating to Class 1 (up to 12 months, $2,500) if intent to injure is proven.
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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