Wife Killed in Alleged Road Rage Shooting After Husband ‘Flipped Off’ Other Driver

“She died for no reason,” the husband of Paola Nuñez Linares tells PEOPLE

By Michael Lee Simpson

Published on July 13, 2023 03:04PM CST

A 37-year-old woman was fatally shot in an apparent road rage incident in Texas on Monday, and now her widower and mother are speaking out to PEOPLE about their grief.

According to a press release from the Hurst Police Department, the incident involved a husband and wife — both in a minivan — and another vehicle on East Loop 820 in Hurst, Texas. (The husband has since identified himself to PEOPLE as Zane Jones, and his late wife as Paola Nuñez Linares.)

“The female’s husband was on the scene and reported that they were driving their vehicle,” the statement said, adding “An occupant of the other vehicle fired several shots at them, striking the female.”

Linares was rushed  to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, where she died just after 2 a.m., NBC5 reported.

Jones alleged to the outlet: “As I was passing that car, another car behind me sped up, going like 90 mph, and was like on my bumper.”

“And I flipped them off,” Jones added, alleging that the driver of the other vehicle “slowed down a little bit and shot through the back left window into the back of her head, and I didn’t know that she’d been hit in the back of the head at all. She ducked, I thought, and I ducked too, and I said, ‘Get out, stay down, I’m getting off.’ He shot again and it went through my headrest, through the windshield.”

According to police, the suspect’s vehicle is a small, dark-colored, older model car.

Jones tells PEOPLE his “wife was the most surprising person I’ve ever met.”

“We met on a Switchfoot fanpage — a band we both love,” he added. “And she replied to a post in messenger to a quick that I had, and it turned into an immediate friendship. And I’ve never had a connection like that with anyone.”

“She was so interesting,” he says. “She was a trained photographer, a trained chef, she was a tarot card reader. She was amazing at everything that she did. Knowing her immediately was unlike knowing anyone else.”

“I couldn’t get enough of knowing her,” he adds. “Our relationship was immediately organic.”

Linares — originally from Guatemala — “never planned on living in the States,” Jones says. “She told me 100 times she sure as hell never planned on living in Texas.”

As the couple’s relationship evolved, Linares traveled to visit Jones a few times before he visited Guatemala for 10 days to meet “her family, her culture and her country,” he says.

“Our relationship was the most impulsive thing — and rewarding thing — in my life,” he says. “Because who would do that? You know?”

During the visit, Jones asked Linares’ mother — Ana — for permission to propose — and was granted the mother’s blessing.

In December of 2021, Jones proposed to Linares, recalling, “I gave her the ring and then she pulled a ring out of her pocket because she was going to propose to me as well.”

They got married in January 2022. She ultimately decided to work with him at Kelly-Moore Paints as a manufacturing training coordinator.

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“She died for no reason. Yeah I have a hard time not blaming myself for flipping somebody off who put us in danger twice,” he adds, describing the suspect as “just a dude who two times in a five second span almost hit our car.”

“I feel like the only way for this guy to be apprehended is by the pressure from the media,” he continues. “The most I can do for her now is let everybody know who we lost.”

Ana, who traveled from Guatemala to be with Jones after the killing, tells PEOPLE her that her daughter was “a free spirit” who was “very loving and caring for other people.”

“She had a very hard time when her father passed away,” she says, noting that her daughter “found happiness marrying Zane, because that was probably the time I noticed she was the happiest. She was really happy living here and working hard.”

Ana says she talked to her daughter “every day” and they were “very, very close.”

Two hours before the shooting, they talked about Linares’ planned trip to visit Ana, she says.

“Everywhere she went, she was like a little light,” she continues. “Like a little angel. That was my daughter.”

According to a report from the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, road rage injuries and deaths involving guns have nearly doubled from 2018 to 2022.

A GoFundMe page has been launched to help cover the costs of Linares’ funeral expenses and travel for her family to and from Guatemala.