An Iowa man shot while he drove through Nebraska remains hospitalized today. Sergeant Lynn Williams of the Nebraska State Patrol says there were two cars westbound on the highway in western Nebraska’s Panhandle region, one driven by a man and the other by his grown son, when the second car vanished from the rear-view mirror. At first it wasn’t clear what had happened. Twenty-two-year–old Joshua Whartman of Cedar Rapids was driving on a highway northwest of Ogallala, Nebraska, when his car went off the road and crashed.

Williams says after rescuers took him to a hospital, doctors discovered he’d been shot in the head. Doctors at the hospital in Ogallala, when they realized the man had been shot, sent him via medical chopper to a larger regional medical center in Scottsbluff, where he underwent surgery. It began late Friday and the surgery continued into early Saturday morning. The Cedar Rapids man remains hospitalized in western Nebraska but investigators aren’t saying much more about the case yet. Neither is the man’s family.

The trooper says Joshua lives in Cedar Rapids, while his parents live in Alliance, Nebraska. Joshua Whartman was in fair condition this morning, still at the hospital in Scottsbluff. The sergeant couldn’t say more about who might have shot the man because the investigation’s continuing. The FBI’s local special agent has joined the State Patrol in the active investigation into the case.