On April 7, 2020, Joyce Gale Whaley, Patricia Denise Nibbe, and Nettie Renee Spencer were working at a truck stop. A truck driver named Idris Abdus-Salaam followed Joyce into a restroom and stabbed her 11 times. Then he chased Denise into the kitchen and stabbed her as well. He stabbed Nettie near the front door, then found a customer in the parking lot calling 911. He pulled her from her car and began stabbing her, but unlike the other three, she survived the attack. A bystander got into a nearby vehicle and ran into Idris twice, but he kept getting up with his knife to seek out more targets. He was finally stopped when the police arrived.
According to the district attorney, Idris chose his victims at random because he was “angry at all people in general.” His last text messages to his girlfriend mentioned his desires to “kill people and go to heaven.”
