The evidence documented an argument, a man behind a semitrailer and warnings issued before the vehicle moved.
WICHITA, Kan. — The final seconds of a dispute between two truck drivers were preserved from more than one angle: one recording captured words inside a cab, another showed the vehicles competing for a parking stall, and a nearby driver sounded a horn before a semitrailer struck a man lying behind it.
Those pieces of evidence became the framework of the criminal case against Travis Briscoe, an Oklahoma trucker accused of causing the death of 57-year-old Abdelmuttalib Mohammed at a north Wichita Love’s Travel Stop. Briscoe was charged with unintentional but reckless second-degree murder, but a Sedgwick County jury convicted him in July of the lesser offense of vehicular homicide.
The case was not built around a mystery about which vehicle hit Mohammed. Briscoe called 911 after discovering what had happened, and reports say he later acknowledged during a jail telephone call that he had run over the other driver. The central dispute was what Briscoe understood before he backed up, what warnings he received and whether his actions met the legal standard for the murder charge filed by prosecutors.
The encounter began on Aug. 13, 2025, as Mohammed and Briscoe maneuvered their commercial trucks in the parking lot near East 21st Street North and Interstate 135. Investigators said the men did not know each other. Their contact arose only because both were seeking the same marked stall, a limited piece of pavement large enough to hold a tractor-trailer.
A recording from another truck reportedly showed Mohammed attempting to back into the stall before Briscoe reached it. Briscoe then moved his own truck into a position that interfered with Mohammed’s maneuver, according to an account of the probable cause affidavit. The two drivers left their cabs or communicated outside the vehicles as the disagreement escalated.
Mohammed repeatedly claimed the space, saying words described in reports as “my spot, my spot.” Briscoe later told police that he struggled to understand Mohammed because of the Georgia driver’s accent. The report does not establish whether the communication difficulty caused the argument or merely complicated an encounter that was already hostile. Rather than yield the stall, Mohammed placed himself behind Briscoe’s vehicle. According to the affidavit account, he lay on the pavement as a physical attempt to preserve the space or stop the truck from backing into it. That decision put him in one of the most dangerous areas around a semitrailer, but it did not end the conflict.
Briscoe asked Mohammed what he was doing and noted that other parking places were available, according to reports based on the investigation. He then climbed back into the truck. From that point, the sequence involved two competing descriptions: Briscoe said he assumed Mohammed had moved because he could no longer see him, while prosecutors emphasized evidence suggesting Briscoe knew the man remained in danger.
The interior cab camera became important because it captured Briscoe’s conduct outside the presence of investigators. Reports say the recording showed him angry and using profanity. It also captured him directing Mohammed to lie down with an obscenity shortly before the truck moved. The wording was significant because it could support an inference that Briscoe was aware of Mohammed’s position rather than surprised to learn that he had been behind the trailer. Witnesses offered another part of the timeline. They told police Briscoe appeared angry and was cursing in the cab. They also characterized the backing movement as dangerous and reckless. Those descriptions were witness accounts rather than automatic findings of fact, but jurors could compare them with the video and with Briscoe’s explanation.
As the semitrailer moved backward, another commercial driver sounded a horn. The warning was immediate enough that Briscoe pulled forward, according to the reported affidavit. He then discovered that Mohammed had been struck and called emergency services. The reviewed reports do not specify the exact length of time between the horn and Briscoe’s decision to stop.
Wichita police were dispatched shortly before 5:30 p.m. Officers found Mohammed under the truck in the 1500 block of East 21st Street North. Sedgwick County Emergency Medical Services pronounced him dead at 5:32 p.m. Authorities treated the location as more than a traffic-accident scene because of the argument and the evidence of what had occurred before Briscoe moved the truck. Briscoe gave investigators an initial account in which he said he thought Mohammed was gone. He pointed to the fact that the other driver was no longer visible from his seat. After speaking with police, Briscoe declined to answer further questions, according to Law&Crime’s summary of the probable cause affidavit. A person questioned in a criminal investigation has the right to stop an interview, and the decision itself does not establish guilt.
Police arrested Briscoe and booked him into the Sedgwick County Jail. He was held under a reported $150,000 bond as the prosecution moved forward. About 10 days after the incident, investigators obtained or reviewed a jail call in which Briscoe reportedly acknowledged running over Mohammed. Public summaries do not provide the complete conversation, making it inappropriate to assign a broader meaning to the admission than the recorded words support.
The original charge focused on recklessness. Under the prosecution’s theory, Mohammed’s death was not a planned killing, but Briscoe’s decision to move the truck allegedly showed such a serious disregard for the danger that it amounted to second-degree murder. That charge required jurors to consider more than the physical act of backing a vehicle. They had to decide whether the state proved the necessary mental state beyond a reasonable doubt.
Briscoe waived a preliminary hearing in February and was bound over for trial. The jury proceeding began in late June before District Judge Sean Hatfield. Prosecutors presented the recordings and testimony about the parking dispute. The defense relied on Briscoe’s contention that he believed the area behind the truck had cleared before he moved. The jury did not convict Briscoe of the charged murder count. Instead, it selected vehicular homicide, an offense tied directly to causing a death through the operation of a motor vehicle. The distinction matters because it shows jurors found criminal responsibility but did not conclude that prosecutors had met the higher burden attached to the second-degree murder allegation.
The verdict also demonstrates why the recordings mattered in different ways. The exterior view helped establish which truck reached the stall first and how the vehicles were positioned. The interior recording supplied evidence of Briscoe’s words and demeanor. The horn warning documented an effort by another driver to interrupt the backing maneuver. None of those pieces alone answered every legal question, but together they gave jurors a chronology to evaluate.
Some facts remained beyond the reach of the cameras. The available reports do not explain precisely why Mohammed believed lying behind the truck would resolve the dispute. They do not establish whether he heard every statement from Briscoe or the other driver’s horn. They also do not reveal what Briscoe could see in each mirror at every second of the maneuver.
That uncertainty left room for the jury to reject the most serious prosecution theory while still finding the operation of the vehicle criminal. A lesser verdict is not a declaration that all disputed facts favored the defense. It represents the level of offense that jurors unanimously concluded the evidence proved. Mohammed was identified as a truck driver from Georgia. The reports reviewed for this article do not include a statement from his family, an obituary or verified details about his work history. Briscoe was described as an Oklahoma trucker and was listed as either 46 or 47 in reports published at different stages of the case.
The collision occurred at a commercial travel stop where drivers park long vehicles between trips and required rest periods. That setting explains the equipment and the confined maneuvering space, but it does not excuse the conduct found criminal by the jury. The conviction arose from the specific evidence of this encounter, not from ordinary risks shared by all truck-stop parking operations.
Reports issued after the verdict said Briscoe was due to be sentenced by Hatfield. The sources reviewed did not provide a confirmed final sentencing result. Any punishment, post-trial motion or appeal therefore remains outside the verified record available for this account.
Author note: Last updated July 27, 2026.