Staff photo / Ed Runyan Curtis A. Brooks of Dallas, Georgia, left, was sentenced to three to four years in prison Wednesday for shooting into the trailer of a fellow semi tractor trailer driver on the Ohio Turnpike near Austintown July 13, 2024, during a confrontation with the other driver. His attorney is Michael Kivlighan.

YOUNGSTOWN — Semi truck driver Curtis A. Brooks of Dallas, Georgia, left his wife and two small children in the hallway of the Mahoning County Courthouse Wednesday morning as he entered a courtroom and was sentenced to three to four years in prison for firing a gun at a fellow semi driver’s trailer.

Brooks, 29, pleaded guilty in March to felonious assault, a gun specification and tampering with evidence stemming from a July 13, 2024, incident on the Ohio Turnpike near Austintown.

Assistant Mahoning County Prosecutor Katherine Jones told Judge Anthony D’Apolito that the other truck driver said he felt that Brooks “swerved toward him, thought he might be falling asleep, so he flashed his bright lights at the operator.

“Later, the victim used his air horn on his truck and then heard two loud pops that were gunshots hitting the trailer of his truck,” she said.

Troopers from the Ohio State Highway Patrol located Brooks and his semi, though they did not find a firearm, Jones said. They found a bullet magazine in the truck. “Ultimately, the defendant admitted to troopers that he had discarded (the gun) in the tree line,” she said.

The victim asked that Brooks get prison time “and that he was most disturbed that the defendant could do something, in his words, stupid, without concern for anybody on the road.”

Brooks made the next remarks, saying, “I know my actions were not the smartest,” but he had “fear” for his pregnant fiancee and their two small daughters in the truck with him.

“Now I go back to those actions and I can clearly see there could have been something I could have done better, which was to call police immediately rather than not at all,” he said.

He added, “I was just trying to protect my family.”

Then he heard them in the hallway.

“I’m pretty sure you can hear them out there now,” he said.

He said he tried not to shoot at the other semi’s tires.

“I just tried to maintain my lane in the right lane and shoot at the trailer, just to get him to back off of us,” he said.

“Why not just pull over? Why not just disengage?” D’Apolito asked.

Brooks said he “dropped down speed. I don’t understand why he didn’t take off. He had ample time to leave.”

D’Apolito said, “Having a gun is a right, but it is also a responsibility. And if people are going to carry guns around, they have to trust themselves that they won’t be tempted to use them in a situation such as this, which is going to endanger another member of the public, endanger the public in general and also subject the person who used that gun so recklessly to prison, all over some lanes on a road.”

He said, “What frustrates me is if you didn’t have that gun with you, this would not have happened. You would have flipped him off, you would have yelled, whatever, but you wouldn’t be standing here on your way to prison. Because you had that gun on that day at that time, that was the solution to your problem. And it really was the problem all along.”

The judge continued, saying “It saddens me, but this was so avoidable. You almost had to work at it to get here today. And I feel bad for your family out there. I feel bad you are going to prison over a couple of lanes on a road, but you can’t do this.”

Defense attorney Michael Kivlighan said Brooks saw “what he thought was a very aggressive action by this other driver,” adding, “He thought this driver was trying to run him off of the road.”

Kivlighan said Brooks “slammed on his brakes and he thought if he could shoot a warning shot at this guy, he is going to drive off.”

The judge said this case should be “a lesson.” He said, “If you’re going to carry a gun, you better be responsible with it. And if you are driving down the road and someone cuts you off, let them go, disengage.”