Road rage escalates to crowbar assault

By Alyse Knorr

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A man who assaulted another driver with a crowbar and threatened to kill him following a road rage incident is out of Cherokee County Jail on bond.

Woodstock Police received a call around 5 p.m. on Thursday, July 30 from a man who said he had been assaulted with a crowbar after a road rage incident on South Cherokee Lane, said Woodstock Police spokesman Officer Paul Brown.

Jaron Reeves, a 21-year-old man from Marietta, said he made an offensive gesture out his car window at a driver who had been tailgating him. The driver, who Reeves later identified in a lineup as 36-year-old Nicholas Petty, continued tailgating him as Reeves sped up to try and get away.

Petty followed Reeves into Madison Falls, the neighborhood where Reeves’ girlfriend lives. Reeves stopped his car at the entrance of the subdivision and Petty pulled his car up to the driver’s side of Reeves’ vehicle, boxing Reeves in.

Petty then began slamming Reeves’ car with a crowbar. He struck the driver’s side window, the sunroof and the rear window and made threats to kill Petty and his family — all while his 18-month-old child waited in the car.

A strike to the driver’s side door hit Reeves in the left upper arm and left him with a “visible injury,” Brown said. In the police report, Reeves told officers Petty struck him in the arm repeatedly.

“Where the bruises are would have been my face if I hadn’t put my arms up,” Reeves told 11Alive. “He could have killed me. If he’d have hit my face with the crowbar, he could have broken my jaw, he could have hit me in the temple. I mean, he could have really hurt me.”

Police used Petty’s license plate number to track him down and arrest him Monday.

Petty is charged with aggravated assault, criminal damage to property in the second degree, one count of criminal trespassing and one count of cruelty to children in the third degree for potentially endangering his child.

A police report said Reeves was the second person to gesture rudely to Petty on the roads that day, and Petty later admitted to police that he was “out of control.” He said Reeves sped past him and angered him because he had his child in the car. He also said Reeves got out of his car and hit him with brass knuckles.

Brown said the Woodstock Police Department receives “quite a few calls” on road rage on I-575 and Highway 92, but said it was very unusual for it to escalate to property damage or physical violence.

The 911 calls about road rage usually involve drivers who are tailgating, cutting people off and changing lanes unsafely, Brown said, and who other drivers think might be drunk.

“If I had to do it all over again, I’d seriously, I’d just let him pass,” Reeves told 11Alive. “I’d just pull over and let him pass.”