Last Friday, May 27, Officer Michele G. Letizia was dispatched to the 1600 block of Broadway, where a woman reported that a strange man had rammed her vehicle and hit a witness after tailgating her from Redmond to Capitol Hill. Earlier that day, around 7:20 p.m., she had been driving westbound on 520 on her way out of Redmond when she realized she was being followed closely by another vehicle. She told Letizia that she believes he may have been racing another “unknown white vehicle, and that she may have inadvertently gotten in the way,” so she changed lanes to allow the car to pass her.
Only he didn’t—he began “racing up behind [her], ‘slamming on his brakes’ within about one foot of [her] rear bumper, barely avoiding collision, backing off of [her] vehicle, racing up behind again, and again slamming on his brakes within about one foot of rear bumper.” The police report states that the suspect “repeated this pattern several times, along 520, at highway speeds.”
Because this is an incredibly stupid thing to do on 520, other drivers noticed—one, quoted in the police report, stated that “he began to follow the two to keep in sight.” Unfazed, or perhaps excited, by the attention, the tailgater allegedly continued his tack “all the way to I-5 and southbound on I-5 all the way to the East Denny Way off-ramp,” at which point the woman became so scared that she took the off-ramp towards Broadway “in hopes of finding a more crowded area.”
But the man just continued tailgating her onto Broadway, so she pulled over just north of East Pine Street, apparently still giving him the benefit of the doubt and “hoping he would finally pass her and drive away.” Instead, he “pulled over directly behind…and asked if she was okay, then accelerated forward and purposely rammed [her] vehicle.”
The witness, who had been following the entire time and is evidently a badass, saw this, and pulled over, got out of his vehicle, and told the driver of to wait there for the police. Further proving his crazy, the driver “backed up to about where [he] had stopped initially, [then] accelerated forward and purposely struck [the witness] in the area of his right leg.” The witness stood his ground, so the suspect allegedly hit him again, then “turned, left the parking spot behind, waved and ‘smiled real big’ at both [the victim and the witness], and drove out of the area southbound on Broadway.”
The witness stated that he was not “significantly” injured, and declined medical attention. After talking with him and the victim, Letizia drove to the address listed by DOL records as matching the suspect’s license plate number, but no one answered at his apartment, though she noted that, “I could hear a smaller-sounding dog inside.”
To be fair, road rage is a natural by-product of driving in a city, but some people apparently need a reminder of the unspoken rule of hateful driving—go ahead and flip off that student driver car ahead of you, feel free to curse the firstborn spawn of those who cut you off behind your closed, tinted windows, and fume quietly with the satisfaction that you had the right of way, bitches, but let’s at least have the decency to keep it passive-aggressive. And confidential to those who consider obsessive tailgating a hobby: it’s not. Go take up needlepoint or something.
I’ll bet it was Kinison.
This is clearly the fault of the cyclists involved. Think they own the road!
In similar circumstances a few years ago, after being followed for about ten miles, I started driving slower, in hopes of boring him, or at least (if the tailgater was insane) having him hit me at lower speeds. He stayed with me. I got off at an exit that wasn’t my own, and drove to a fire station. He drove away.
sounds like bailo.
So if you harrass someone, intentionally ram their vehicle with your own, intentionally hit a person–their actual body, not their car–with your car twice, then flee the scene, all you have to do to get away with it is….not go home for awhile. You know, what a few hours. Get a burger. Take in a movie. Then go home.
“That’s some fine police work there, Lou.”
Similar thing happened with my wife a few years ago. She called 911 from her car as she was being tailgated, and the dispatcher provided real-time directons toward the SPD West Precinct.
Did he have a beard? I was tailgated by a Road Rage Santa Claus, who then pulled in front of me and slammed on his breaks. On 520. Going 65.
@5 – C’mon. They are busy conducting raids on the wrong houses for a $30 bag of pot and killing whoever tries to defend the house against the all-in-black and door-breaking intruders. Srsly. Where are your priorities, sir?
I would’ve called 911. Road-ragers are known to kill in their blind rage…
I witnessed the same thing as #7 happen to another car on 520 about a month ago but wasn’t able to get the license number. What is it with 520 and Rage?
@5 seriously.
I doubt this road rage incident is the only bad thing the suspect has ever done and the SPD should write it off as “just some road rage the victim probably provoked.” The suspect is clearly a freakin’ nut job that needs some social work or prison time to straighten up.
I really hope I get to read a follow-up on this because I want to hear what the nutjob has to say.
Like, I’m really curious in what kind of psychotic delusion this seems like an appropriate or profitable course of action. Or, I dunno, maybe he has a low-speed collision fetish and the smile was because he was rubbing himself against the bottom rim of his steering wheel the whole time.
Going after her “tail bumper”.
This is like the motorized version of the Seattle Groper.
I work as a muni prosecutor and when we see a driving pattern like this it’s almost always a mental health issues. Typical case-guy gets picked up, spends weeks waiting for a competency eval, we offer a deferred sentence but he can’t afford treatment so he doesn’t comply and ends up serving time. Plus no treatment so he’s still mentally ill and still driving. Cuts to mental health kills in more ways than you think.
#4
Get in line, weidobus.
I have several online stalkers in waiting including public ones like Fnarf who harass me much more cleverly.
Does no one think to call 911 at the time?!? Victim and witness just float around like butterflies until the nutcase confronts them. Then after all the shit goes down they think, oh gee, maybe we should call the police. This tailgater is obviously a borderline psycho, after about 10 seconds of him tailgating me and it being obvious he was following me I’d be on the phone calling 911. And keep driving to wherever the operator told me to go.
520 is always nuts for tailgaters. You cannot go fast enough in the right lane for the tailgating freaks, even with plenty of space to left(during non-rush hours). Half the time it’s a 1980s beater, the other half it’s a $200K+ “supercar”.
It’s also the only highway where I’ve seen, four times, people STOP when they miss their exit (or are in the middle or left lane) to drive on the shoulder back to the ramp. Instead of safely going the the next exit and turning around. Always in a $75K+ vehicle.
@14, you should really change your profile picture to Jesus on the cross- it would go rather nicely with that persecution complex you’re sporting.
@15 What kills me is the fact that this woman was literally 4 blocks from the East Precinct when she decided to pull over. doh.
It’s against the law to use your phone while driving, not that anyone has actually stopped doing that.
Jesus guys, she cut me off. What tdo you expect me to do?
@ 15 – There were several calls to 911.
I was there and witnessed the end of this story from a #60 bus that was heading south on Broadway. The driver of my bus saw the crazy driver hit the guy twice with his vehicle – as the man was talking to the 911 dispatcher.
@ 18 – Sounds like she was unfamiliar with the area, she probably didn’t know that the precinct house was just up the street.
@ 13 – Mental issues sounds just about right. We watched the tailgating, person-&-car-hitting driver just meander south on Broadway, apparently without a care in the world. This is definitely not the last we’re going to hear about this driver.