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.”