SALISBURY – A Salisbury Post employee was filling in for a newspaper carrier who had car trouble early Sunday morning when her car was shot at from a truck behind her. Neither driver nor her car sustained any injury or damage.

The shooting and a subsequent chase appears to have been prompted by the driver of the truck seeing distribution manager Lee Ann Garrett put a Sunday edition in a newspaper box, though the motive is not known.

Garrett said one of the contract newspaper carriers reached out to her just before 4 a.m. Sunday to report she was having car trouble and needed help finishing her route. Garrett picked up the remaining papers and began to deliver them.

She was on Poole Road where she stopped to put a newspaper in a roadside box, and when she sat back up, said she noticed a vehicle in her rearview mirror.

“At first I thought it was a cop checking to see what I was doing,” she said.

But when the driver made no attempt to communicate, she moved on. The truck then fell in line behind her, she said, following so closely she missed the next stop and had to turn in to Elljoy Lane to turn around and go back to the box.

As she was turning around, she heard, and felt the vibration of a gun shot.

“I wasn’t looking at him, because I was backing up, but I heard it and I felt it,” she said. “It took me a split second to realize what had just happened.”

Garrett said she immediately tried to get away from the truck, but he continued to follow her. She said when she reached Agner Road she thought she lost him, but then saw his headlights coming around a curve and realized the other driver was still behind her.

She said at one point she was sure she ran a stop sign, and once on Stokes Ferry Road their speeds reached 85 miles per hour as she tried to get away. When another car ended up in front of her, “he was so close to my bumper I couldn’t see his headlights.”

She did get a description of the truck — light in color, either dirty white, cream or faded yellow, two-door, smaller pickup, slightly older but in good condition, with one defining characteristic, a light bar that stretched between the headlights — and a bit of a description of the driver, a white man, 20s to 30s, with dark hair and no hat.

“That light bar was how I knew without a doubt that it was the same truck all the time,” she said.

Initially she was not sure she could manage driving and talking on the phone, but eventually she called 911 on her cellphone. The dispatch center realized the situation was happening in real time and advised her to drive to the Salisbury Police Department.

Neighbors at two houses at the location said they were woken from a sound sleep by the gunshot, and one said while they have heard guns being fired in the distance, they’ve never heard it outside their front door. One neighbor also said they’ve seen the truck around town, but do not know the driver.

Garrett said when she got to Innes Street, the driver of the truck even tried to get beside her at one point, but she sped up to avoid it.

“I can’t believe I didn’t crash,” she said. “I mean, 85 on Stokes Ferry?”

Garrett did not finish the route and was shaken.

“Driving home, a truck came up behind me and for a split second, I thought ‘oh no,’ ” she said.

Salisbury police questioned Garrett, but she was advised she needed to file a report with the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office because the incident occurred in the county.

Anyone with any information is asked to call the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office at 704-216-8700.