What looks to be a bad breakup turned into a dangerous encounter on the road. A 22-year-old man in Fort Myers, Florida, has been arrested after he was caught on video repeatedly ramming a Mercedes with his ex-girlfriend and four other passengers inside. Officers responded to the road rage incident where they discovered significant damage to the vehicle, with one of its doors torn off and scattered into pieces on the road. One of the victims inside was able to film the encounter on his phone as the enraged driver crashed into the Mercedes multiple times and allegedly attempted to run some of them over.
Florida man arrested after intense road rage incident
On Sunday, August 23, at around 3:45 a.m., Fort Myers police responded to a report of a vehicular crash on Economy Street and Palm Avenue caused by 22-year-old Holden Seth Thibodeaux, according to Gulf Coast News.
Footage taken by a cellphone by one of the passengers, Devon Perry III, shows Thibodeaux ramming into the rented white Mercedes more than once with his silver Toyota sedan. The Toyota is seen rear-ending the back-left side of the vehicle hard as the five passengers yell in panic. Both vehicles make a turn onto a different road before the sedan rams into the vehicle again. One of the female victims is heard shouting “please” several times as the Mercedes slows down to a halt.
In an attempt to deescalate the situation, a female passenger is seen running out of the car, approaching the Toyota, and talking to Thibodeaux through the window. But as the driver of the Mercedes attempted to open his door, the Toyota accelerated and hit the driver’s side, ripping the door cleanly off and landing on the ground in pieces.
Thibodeaux then fled the scene while the five passengers remained there, though he reportedly remained in contact with passengers in the Mercedes by phone and said he would not return to the scene if the police were still there.
Perry offered his perspective on the incident, telling the outlet his version of why Thibodeaux crashed into them. “He just lost your car, lost your girlfriend, I mean he kinda lost everything in one night,” he said. “And now you’re in jail.”
Thibodeaux had been following the Mercedes around town for a while before the road rage incident was caught on film. When Thibodeaux opened the door of his Toyota, supposedly to get out of the car, Perry thought that the situation had de-escalated, but that wasn’t the case.
He continued, “Once he saw people getting out of the car, because we thought he was about to get out of the car or something, we didn’t know he was trying to run us over.”
Perry says that this incident is actually the first time he has seen Thibodeaux. He said that the encounter was a “regular night that turned into not a regular night really quick” and that “no one expected that.”
Police say that, after watching cellphone footage of the incident, they found Thibodeaux in his car at an apartment complex off Pine Island Road. He was taken into custody by the Cape Coral Police Department and booked in Lee County Jail.
Thibodeaux has been charged with a hit and run, or leaving the scene of a crash involving property damage, and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
Several commenters on Facebook say that Tribodeaux should be grateful that the incident didn’t escalate further. One wrote, “Lucky he didn’t catch lead poisoning doing that!”
Another hopes that the ex-girlfriend doesn’t give him a second chance after the incident, writing “Gurl do not answer his jail call.”
