Lake Elsinore Man Killed In Las Vegas Road Rage Shooting; Police Searching For Suspect

HEMET (CBSLA) — A Lake Elsinore man was killed earlier this month in a deadly case of road rage in Las Vegas.

Roughly 260 miles away from home, 59-year-old Jeffrey Boyajian was driving down the 15 Freeway in Las Vegas with his friend on Aug. 5. The pair were celebrating Boyajian's birthday when he was fatally shot while driving on the freeway in an apparent act of road rage.

"Just glass and bullets just going everywhere," said the passenger of that vehicle who did not want to be identified. "I mean it just didn't end."

The Hemet woman said she was riding in the passenger seat of the vehicle when the sun started to go down and the headlights from the suspect's van following close behind.

"They were just on our butts forever," she said. "We didn't change lanes, we never cut them off. There was no incident to provoke them to even want to do what they did to us."

Las Vegas Metro Police said the van might have been tailgating Boyajian's vehicle prior to the shooting.

"He was a good guy, and he didn't deserve to have his life ended that way," the passenger said.

The van the suspect was driving was found over the weekend near Westmont, about five miles east of Los Angeles International Airport. The suspect in the shooting was nowhere to be found.

That van is now back at the crime lab in Las Vegas as Boyajian's friends pray for word of an arrest. According to those friends, Boyajian was a proud father to a teenage daughter, a devoted fan of the Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots.

They said Boyajian was a longtime worker in the local casino industry who often participated in charity events.

"Jeff spent his dying breath protecting that lady," Michael Soloway, a friend said of Boyajian's actions for his passenger. "He protected her, and made sure that he got her to the side of the road."

Las Vegas police are investigating the shooting as a homicide and ask that anyone with information contact their offices.