Over 60 rock-throwing attacks reported on Interstate 35 in Austin, Texas

“The fact that there hasn’t been a death — I think we are just lucky at this point,” said Asst. Chief McIlvain. “This kind of a crime, it’s extremely serious and we take it as serious as someone trying to kill somebody.” When police started investigating the crimes, they thought the rocks were being thrown off overpasses. Now police believe the rocks are being thrown from moving cars on the opposite side of the highway. “What I would do is drive on the outside lanes,” said McIlvain. “If a rock was coming over you have a little bit further distance, and then the accuracy might be off.”

Police say, in the first incident, a Williamson County EMS ambulance was hit by a rock. It happened at 12300 N. I-35, near Tech Ridge Boulevard/Yager Lane, at 1:20 a.m. Williamson County says there were two EMTs in the ambulance at the time of the incident, but no one was injured. The ambulance was returning to Hutto after dropping off a patient in Austin.

"Our first handful of cases were all limited to the lower deck area. At that time, we thought there were rocks coming over the overpasses, which would have been an easy solution to fix," McIlvain explained. "Now that we know they are coming from opposing traffic, we're dealing with I-35 which stretches from obviously the border, all the way north.

"That would obviously be a very lengthy, time intensive and most likely an expensive endeavor, so we really need to hear from TxDOT if that is a viable solution and if so how do we move forward with that kind of project," he said.

APD said they received a call at 7:41 a.m. from a person driving on northbound I-35 near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The driver's vehicle's back windshield was busted out by an unknown object. No one was injured in the incident.

This is the second possible rock-throwing incident in two days. There was another incident on Friday morning on I-35 near the Dean Keeton exit.