sure shot, the law that was broken was simple assault. According to the laws where he lives, the guy drove in a manner that is certain to intimidate most people and he did it deliberately.
The driver, who was the 'victim' of this low level simple assault misdemeanor, was in fact intimidated to the point that he diverted from his intended path and eventually sought shelter from someone that had caused him to be concerned about his safety. We know this as a fact, he was worried about what the kook was going to do.
His pursuer followed him to his eventual stopping point, the place where he felt safe and able to defend against possible further aggression that he suspected might be violent, and committed a second incident of misdemeanor assault by yelling at him, and went a bit farther than just calling him a jerk.
Two misdemeanor crimes and the police wouldn't be the one filing the charges, in cases of assault, the victim of this (whatever we would call this incident of trailing a driver for several miles, then confronting him and yelling at him) is the one who decides whether to file charges. Maybe they would eventually be dismissed by authorities as being frivolous.
The problem is that we don't know what this guy's pathology was. He obviously has a couple of stripped bolts or he wouldn't have pursued another driver for quite a distance, just to yell at him for driving like a jerk. Most people just throw the bird.
only a couple of months ago, a man in my dear, quiet little town chased another man down, who then stopped on a highway. the pursuer raced to the car and gave him the gun right in front of his two children. the guy died in his car right there with two screaming children in the back seat.
Everyone here can give examples of incidents just as simple as this that ended badly, but also thousands of these incidents that did nothing but scare the hell out of people.
Playing devil's advocate is fine, I am also a devil's advocate, but we aren't on the same page here. There have even been incidents involving a police officer who was a serial rapist and murderer who would pursue women at a certain location along a highway and force them off into a cul de sac off of that highway.
A young lady who worked for me was once followed through a country area and turned three times before the guy backed away. As she told the story about this guy who drove a lime green pickup, I remembered that there was a murder suspect still at large who drove a similar colored pickup, very few of that hideous green were made.
It's not always serial killers or other violent criminals, sometimes it's a jealous husband, or just a kid with too much time on his hands who wants to wind someone up.
I knew a man who was ordinarily a really smart and stable guy, but he had anger problems and could hold a grudge. A person driving a mercury sideswiped him and left the scene, and forty years later when he told me why he still hated everyone who drove a mercury, the rage and bitterness was still there.
There's only one person who knows what is going on when these things happen, it's the guy who is following. It is stupid to presume that anyone who does this is intending violence but it happens, and to err on the side of safety is the proper thing to do.
That is the point of my posts, once again, we don't know what this guy's mental pathology is, but we do know that he's behaving improperly and in a way that a proper person wouldn't.
I presume that everyone has the sense to know when it is a genuine concern, a concern that merits police intervention. Do all of the normal things to get out of it, but when it appears to be needed, it may save a life, or lives.
Something that has never been brought up. Whoever other driver was, he wasn't afraid at all, was he? He followed a "jerk" all over god's earth and confronted him in a parking lot. Was he so stupid that he dismissed the possibility that his 'target' might be the crazy one, the one who would come out of his car with a bat? Or was he the crazy one, the one who had a gun tucked under his leg, ready and waiting to put an end to the jerk who pissed him off?
It bears repeating, over and over again, we do know that the guy was impaired in some way. That wasn't a thing that a person does if he has normal thought processes going.
We don't, however, know what his actual pathology is. Was he taking substances? Was he just someone with cowboy bob fantasies, who wanted to be the town sheriff? Was the guy someone who just hated people who drove mercuries? Or was he someone with paranoid schizophrenia, who had some sort of crazy, maybe violent monolog going through his head? Not every mumbling street person is violent, but the few that are crazy are why we carry guns, and why we should err on the side of safety. It's not about someone who wants to be hall monitor, it's about the kooks who want to control and modify someone else's behavior, and may or may not be friendly about it.
This sort of thing reminds me of the old woman who lived a few houses to the east of me. she didn't like my casual attitude to lawn maintenance. She would come to my house and stand in the street and glare at my home. she would come and pull weeds and throw them onto my porch. she went to the homes of my neighbors and complained. Every time my wife found a stack of weeds thrown on my front porch, she was ready to call the police. Myself, I considered it and just assumed that she was a bitter old maid who really hated beautiful young couples, and believed that the happy couple down the road should be just like she was. Just substitute the dandelions for turning without using a signal.
