Jurors rejected the original second-degree murder charge but found Travis Briscoe criminally responsible for Abdelmuttalib Mohammed’s death.

WICHITA, Kan. — A jury has convicted an Oklahoma truck driver of vehicular homicide after a dispute over a parking stall at a Wichita travel stop ended with another driver being struck and killed by a semitrailer.

Travis Briscoe was found guilty in early July in the Aug. 13, 2025, death of 57-year-old Abdelmuttalib Mohammed of Georgia. Briscoe had gone to trial on a more serious charge of unintentional but reckless second-degree murder. Jurors instead returned a verdict on the lesser vehicular homicide offense after reviewing recordings and testimony about the confrontation at a Love’s Travel Stop in north Wichita.

The verdict narrowed the case to a central question raised by the parking-lot encounter: whether Briscoe operated the truck in a way that unlawfully caused Mohammed’s death, even if the state did not prove the more serious murder accusation beyond a reasonable doubt. The finding means jurors held Briscoe criminally accountable for the fatal movement of the semitrailer while declining to convict him of the charge prosecutors originally filed.

Police were called shortly before 5:30 p.m. to the Love’s in the 1500 block of East 21st Street North. Officers and emergency workers found Mohammed beneath a truck. Sedgwick County Emergency Medical Services pronounced him dead at 5:32 p.m., according to information released by Wichita police and cited in local reports. Investigators said Mohammed and Briscoe had not known each other before the encounter.

The confrontation began when the two commercial drivers tried to position their tractor-trailers near the same parking stall. Reports based on a probable cause affidavit said Mohammed had already been attempting to back into the space when Briscoe approached and also moved for it. The competing maneuvers developed into a verbal argument in a lot designed for large commercial vehicles, where every movement of a trailer requires space and close attention.

Mohammed insisted that the stall was his, according to the affidavit account. Briscoe later told investigators that he had difficulty understanding Mohammed because of his accent. At some point during the dispute, Mohammed got out of his vehicle and lay down behind Briscoe’s truck, apparently as an effort to stop Briscoe from taking the space. The available reports do not establish how long Mohammed remained on the pavement before the truck moved.

Briscoe asked Mohammed what he was doing and pointed out that other parking stalls were available, according to the affidavit as summarized by Law&Crime. He then returned to the cab. Briscoe said he believed Mohammed had moved because he could no longer see him. That account became important because Mohammed was in a position where he could not safely be seen through ordinary direct vision from the driver’s seat.

Another trucker began sounding a horn as Briscoe backed the semitrailer, according to the affidavit. Briscoe pulled forward after the warning and realized that the truck had struck Mohammed. Briscoe then called 911. Those actions formed one part of the evidence, but prosecutors also relied on witness descriptions and recordings that they argued showed Briscoe had continued the maneuver despite knowing Mohammed had been behind the vehicle.

Witnesses described Briscoe as angry and using profanity in the cab before he backed up. They said the truck moved in a dangerous and reckless manner. The probable cause account also referred to video from inside Briscoe’s cab that captured him yelling at Mohammed and using an obscenity while telling him to lie down. Jurors were able to consider the recording itself rather than relying only on later statements from the two men involved.

Video from another truck reportedly provided a wider view of the dispute. According to summaries of the evidence, it showed Mohammed trying to enter the stall before Briscoe arrived and blocked the space. That footage was relevant to the origin of the disagreement, but it did not by itself settle the legal issue. The jury still had to assess Briscoe’s conduct at the moment he moved the semitrailer and decide which level of criminal responsibility the evidence proved.

Briscoe initially spoke with police and said he assumed Mohammed was no longer behind the truck. He later declined to continue answering detectives’ questions, according to the affidavit account. Authorities arrested him after the incident, and he remained in the Sedgwick County Jail under a reported $150,000 bond while the case proceeded through court. Investigators also reviewed a telephone call Briscoe made from the jail about 10 days after Mohammed’s death. Reports describing the call said Briscoe acknowledged that he had run Mohammed over. An acknowledgment that the truck struck Mohammed was not the same as an admission to the original murder charge, however. The disputed issue was Briscoe’s state of mind and the degree of risk he recognized before backing the vehicle.

Prosecutors charged Briscoe with second-degree murder under a theory that the killing was unintentional but resulted from reckless conduct showing an extreme disregard for human life. That accusation did not require proof that Briscoe planned Mohammed’s death. It did require the state to establish a degree of recklessness greater than the jury ultimately found beyond a reasonable doubt. Vehicular homicide, the offense selected by the jury, addresses an unlawful killing caused through the operation of a motor vehicle. By returning that verdict, the jurors distinguished between conduct sufficient for a homicide conviction involving a vehicle and the more severe mental-state finding required for the charged form of second-degree murder. The lesser verdict did not treat the death as blameless or merely accidental.

Briscoe, identified in reports as an Oklahoma driver, was listed as 46 during the trial, though earlier reports described him as 47. The difference appears to reflect when the reports were published rather than a dispute about his identity. Mohammed was consistently identified as a 57-year-old commercial driver from Georgia. Local reports said Briscoe waived his right to a preliminary hearing in February and was bound over for trial. The case was assigned to Sedgwick County District Judge Sean Hatfield. During the trial, prosecutors presented the cab recordings, the account of the other truck driver who sounded a warning and evidence about the positions of the two semitrailers before the collision.

The defense position, as reflected in accounts of Briscoe’s police statement, centered on his assertion that he did not see Mohammed before backing and assumed the other man had moved. The prosecution pointed to the warnings, the argument and Briscoe’s words inside the cab as evidence that the movement was not an ordinary parking mishap. The jury’s lesser verdict indicates it did not fully accept either side’s most sweeping interpretation.

The case turned an argument over a single truck stall into a homicide prosecution because of the size and limited visibility of the equipment involved. A tractor-trailer can create extensive areas around the vehicle that cannot be seen directly from the cab. In this case, however, the legal question was not simply whether Mohammed entered such an area. It was whether Briscoe knew enough about the danger to make his decision to back up criminal.

No evidence cited in the reviewed reports suggested that the two drivers had a prior relationship or an earlier dispute. Police said they were strangers whose encounter began in the parking lot. Authorities also did not publicly identify any broader motive beyond their competition for the stall and the argument that followed.

The available reporting does not provide a verified account of statements from Mohammed’s relatives or describe his life beyond his age, Georgia residence and work as a truck driver. It also does not identify Briscoe’s defense attorney or provide a complete transcript of the closing arguments. Those details should not be inferred from the verdict or reconstructed from partial descriptions of the trial.

Briscoe’s conviction represents the latest confirmed result in a case that began as a second-degree murder prosecution. Reports published immediately after the verdict said sentencing was to take place before Hatfield. A reliable, independently reviewed account of the sentence was not available among the sources consulted, leaving the precise punishment and any later court filings unconfirmed.

Author note: Last updated July 27, 2026.