A North Georgia man faces a dozen charges after being accused of hitting his wife’s car multiple times, threatening to shoot her and then hitting a deputy’s patrol car head-on after his wife called 911.
The deputy responded to Marble City Road and Ga. 60 about 4:30 p.m. last Thursday and found the victim and her husband in separate SUVs stopped at the intersection, according to a Fannin County Sheriff’s Office incident report.
It didn’t take long for things to escalate.
Before the deputy could get out of her patrol car, the suspect drove around his wife’s SUV and hit the deputy’s vehicle head-on, the report said. The man, identified as Richard Nicholas Head, 29, of Morganton, then allegedly backed up and drove away.
The deputy said she was not able to chase him since her patrol car suffered “extensive damage,” according to the report. Another deputy picked up the baton and hunted down Head.
He was found driving his damaged SUV along Ga. 60, which prompted a brief chase. During the incident, Head is accused of running a stop sign, driving on the wrong side of the road and nearly hitting another vehicle head-on.
The deputy eventually got prepared to attempt a PIT maneuver, but Head swerved into the patrol car, causing the suspect to lose control of his vehicle and crash, the report said. He was arrested without further incident.
Head’s wife told the deputy who initially responded to the call what took place, saying it began with an argument. In a written police statement, she said her husband “flipped out on her for no reason and took my keys and had pushed me.”
The duo drove in her SUV to pick up his vehicle in Ellijay, which is when they began to drive separately, she said. After that, he allegedly followed her around and told her she would be dead if she stopped at any of her friends’ homes, threatening to shoot her.
At one point, they pulled over in a church parking lot, where she refused to roll down her windows. In response, he tried to punch out the window before giving up and going back to his vehicle, the report said.
When the woman tried to drive away, Head hit her vehicle head-on before backing into the side of it, the report said. The victim said he “continued to tell her he was going to run her off the (side of the road) and kill her.”
She called Head and told him she was going to drive to their house in an effort to calm him down. After that, she called 911, leading to the other events.
The Georgia State Patrol was also called to investigate the wrecks involving the deputies.
Head faces 12 charges, including two counts of aggravated assault, one count of fleeing police, hit-and-run and probation violation. The other charges are traffic offenses.
He was booked into the Fannin County jail, where he remained Wednesday. His bond information was not immediately available.
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