A 48-year-old Montana woman says a white Ford pickup truck followed her, tailgated her, and tried to force her off the road while she drove alone on Highway 191 on April 10, and at least three other women now describe strikingly similar encounters on the same stretch of rural highway in recent years.
Lizette Lamb told the Daily Mail she was driving from Roundup to Glasgow when she stopped at The Ole' Mercantile Conoco station in Grass Range around 7 p.m. That's when she first noticed the truck. What followed, she said, was a terrifying pursuit through empty country that ended only after she showed the two men inside the vehicle that she was armed.
The incident has drawn attention not just because of Lamb's account, but because her husband Travis says they found 36 accounts from other women who reported similar experiences in the same area. Fergus County investigators are now reviewing surveillance footage from the gas station, and the Phillips County Sheriff's Office has confirmed receiving the report, along with similar calls in the past.
Lamb said the truck pulled too close to her bumper shortly after she left the gas station and headed north.
"I noticed that they were pulling too close to me, to my bumper, and at that moment, I just felt very uneasy."
She initially gave the driver the benefit of the doubt, thinking the truck might simply be trying to pass. But even after she sped up to about 85 miles per hour, the truck stayed right behind her.
"I was like, 'Oh my goodness, I'm going really fast and they're almost tailgating me.'"
Then, Lamb said, the truck pulled alongside her and tried to force her off the road. Her husband Travis later described the maneuver to Cowboy State Daily: "She was fortunate, kind of timed it to when to turn into her and hit her, she sped up." He added simply: "And they missed."
Lamb said she could not reach 911, a common problem in Montana's vast rural stretches where cell service is thin. She said she reached for her pistol and showed it to the two men in the truck.
"They made a fast U-turn and they turned the other way and they took off."
She later called Travis, who reported the incident to the Phillips County Sheriff's Office. Dispatchers confirmed the report and told him they had received similar calls before. Deputies were dispatched, but family members reached Lizette first, a reality of rural law enforcement where response times can stretch across dozens of miles of open range.
In cases like these, where law enforcement arrives long after the threat has passed, citizens are often left to protect themselves. It's a reality that residents of communities facing sudden criminal threats understand all too well.
The day after the incident, Travis shared the experience on Facebook. The response was immediate, and alarming. The couple said they found 36 accounts from women who described similar encounters in the same area of central Montana.
Three of those women spoke publicly.
Holly Pierce of Columbia Falls said she experienced a nearly identical encounter in December 2024 while driving on Highway 87 near Roundup, heading to a funeral in Glasgow. She said a truck repeatedly brake-checked her and her friend, then stopped in the roadway.
"He gunned it down and started racing next to me and I just could not get around him. I was going over a hundred miles an hour. I was just trying to get away from him."
Pierce managed to escape, but the encounter left her shaken. "It scares me to think what would happen if I would have stopped and said 'Do you need help?'" she said. "It was so crazy and I think about what happens to the women who haven't gotten away."
That question, what happens to the women who don't get away, hangs over every one of these accounts. In a state where abductions and disappearances can go unnoticed for days in remote areas, the stakes are not abstract.
Joni Hartford of Lewistown described another encounter that followed the same pattern. She had dropped off belongings to her son, a football player at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, and stopped at a gas station on her way out of town. She headed north on Highway 87 around 7:30 or 8 p.m. and noticed a truck close behind her.
"It was right behind me and I kept thinking, 'God this vehicle is super close.'"
Hartford said she slowed to 60 miles per hour, hoping the truck would pass. It didn't. She called her husband, who told her to just stop. Her response was blunt: "I am not stopping. I'm in the middle of freaking nowhere."
She eventually escaped by darting around an Amish buggy just before a blind hill. The truck couldn't follow. Hartford said she hit 90 miles per hour to put distance between them. "I never seen him again," she said.
Hartford carries a.380 pistol. She said she couldn't identify the truck's make by its headlights alone, but she could see the marker lamps on tow mirrors, enough to tell it was a large Ford pickup, a three-quarter ton or one-ton. She noted the truck had no front license plate.
Hartford drew a direct connection to Lamb's experience. "It's the same exact situation," she said. "I can't say for certain it was the same person, but it sure seems like the same person."
She offered one more observation: "They're targeting [women] at gas stations. That's the only place they could have found me because it's the only place I've stopped."
Even Penny Ronning, cofounder and president of the Yellowstone Human Trafficking Task Force, said she had a similar experience. In 2022, while running as a Democrat for U.S. Congress, she was driving from Billings to Havre for a campaign event when a four-door white pickup truck with blacked-out windows pulled up behind her. "That was what made it frightening," Ronning said. "It was that I was followed."
But Ronning pushed back on rhetoric linking the incidents to human trafficking, a term that has circulated in some online discussions. "Human trafficking is the use of force, fraud or coercion to compel a person into commercial sex acts or labor against their will," she said. "Just because someone is being followed, that doesn't rise to the level of human trafficking."
She's right on the legal definition. But that distinction offers cold comfort to a woman alone on a two-lane highway at dusk with a truck trying to run her into a ditch. Whatever the motive, and investigators say it remains unclear, the behavior described by these women is dangerous and potentially criminal.
Krista Manley, owner of The Ole' Mercantile in Grass Range, said she has been reviewing surveillance footage from the station's camera system, which she described as offering a 360-degree view with no blind spots. So far, she said, she had found no sign of the truck on the footage.
But Manley, who holds a PhD in cognitive psychology, was careful not to dismiss Lamb's account. "That doesn't mean it didn't happen," she said. "My default is to absolutely believe women and she was, she was rattled."
"We're absolutely not arguing the authenticity of the report in any way, shape or form. In my previous life before I had the store, I actually was a memory and cognition researcher. I understand how stress impacts memory."
Manley said she hopes the Lambs will come review the footage themselves. Fergus County investigators are also hoping the security footage can help identify the driver as the investigation continues.
The fact that surveillance evidence may hold the key to identifying a suspect is a familiar element in cases like this, and a reminder of how much rural communities depend on the few cameras that exist along these corridors.
No suspect has been identified. No arrest has been made. No vehicle has been matched to the accounts. The motive behind the behavior, whether it's predatory targeting, road rage, or something else, remains unknown.
Travis Lamb said he shared the story publicly not to cause panic but to raise awareness. "I did it for the aspect of just making people aware that 'Hey, you know it's not the Montana that we all grew up in,'" he said. "It's changed and we have to change along with it or we're going to be victims of it."
He said he's hoping someone recognizes the truck. "That's what I'm praying for."
Lizette Lamb was more direct about what she believes the men intended. "I don't think they were trying to scare me," she said. "I think it was more sinister. I think they had a plan. But I was like, 'I'm going to go home, I'm going to see my family.'"
She reflected on what it took to get there: "That's when all that became to me a reality, like it's something I think today, this moment, I might end up having to use my gun because it's my life. It's either them or me, and I choose me."
In a country where threats against women are too often dismissed until it's too late, that instinct, and the means to act on it, may be the only thing standing between safety and catastrophe on a dark Montana highway.
The accounts from these four women share common threads: a white pickup, rural highways, evening hours, gas station stops, and the terrifying realization that help is nowhere close. Whether one driver is responsible for all of these encounters or multiple predators are operating in the same corridor, the picture is deeply unsettling.
Law enforcement confirmed receiving reports. Investigators are working the case. But for now, no one has been caught.
In rural Montana, where the nearest deputy may be an hour away, a woman's best friend on a dark highway isn't a 911 dispatcher. It's the pistol on the seat beside her, and the willingness to use it.