‘Thud’ startled woman at stoplight. Rogue archer had launched an arrow at her car, cops say

A woman in Stockton, California, was stopped at a red light Wednesday when a sudden “thud” jolted her to attention, the California Highway Patrol said in a post on Facebook.

But it wasn’t anything wrong with her engine. As she looked around, she realized an arrow had fallen from the sky — and plunged right into the right side of her hood.

Now police are encouraging the unknown archer to stop shooting the arrows before someone gets seriously hurt.

“It should go without saying how unsafe it is to discharge weapons into the air, even arrows...,” the Highway Patrol wrote in the post, alongside photos of the arrow.

The photos show the arrow’s tip plunged through the hood of the car. There does not appear to be any other damage.



The angle of the arrow indicates that it was shot from long distance before hitting the car, an archery instructor told KCRA.

“I thought that was crazy,” said the driver, Alex Clark, according to KCRA. “Like how? Where’d this arrow come from? How did it happen? Who shot it? I don’t know.”

Another arrow was found on the ground not far from the scene, CBS 13 reported.

“I was pulling into work today, and I’m like, opening up and everything and I glance over and I was like, um that’s interesting,” said Allison Pineda, who found the arrow near her family’s auto-repair business, according to the station. “If it’s happening often, well then yeah it’s scary because we’re in an area like this where we have a restaurant and we have quite a lot of people running through.”

Photos of the arrow were shared more than 1,000 times and received hundreds of comments.

Other cars have been struck with mysterious arrows before, including a Moreno Valley, California, case in 2017 in which a man coming home from a walk heard something whiz by him and realized an arrow had just plunged into his car only a few feet away, CBS Los Angeles reported.

About a year later, a Colorado man was still driving when a steel-tipped arrow sliced through his car door, KKTV reported.

“If that thing was a little bit up and further over, it would have gone through the win — I mean, it went through the steel door for crying out loud! It could have gotten me!” he said at the time, according to the station.