The Low Road to Protest

Bullets and rocks fly as truckers try to block new taxes

It started out as a nationwide protest against higher fuel taxes and highway-user fees for trucks. But within hours, violence eclipsed the issues. Shortly after 11 p.m. on the first day of the Independent Truckers Association (ITA) strike, George Franklin Capps, 34, a Teamster driver, lay slumped in the cab of his 18-wheeler on Route 701, north of tiny Newton Grove, N.C., fatally shot in the neck by a sniper. "The strike is the last thing we talked about," recalled his widow Esmond. "I...

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