Splendora Police Department(HOUSTON) — A man has been charged in Texas after a couple captured him on video allegedly taunting them and striking their car with his SUV — as children rode in both vehicles — during an apparent road-rage incident.
Lucas Martin and girlfriend Summer Rose said they were traveling along Interstate 59 Tuesday, on their way to Livingston, around 5 p.m., when they noticed another car close behind them.
“We both looked behind us and we were kinda like … ‘Woah,’ and so they sped around to our left and when they sped around to our left, we both looked left because they were driving crazy,” Rose told ABC Houston affiliate KTRK-TV. “We were both looking kinda like, ‘What’s going on with them.'”
At first, Martin said, he and Rose laughed at the driver of the white Tahoe speeding past them on the road.
“When somebody is acting like that, it’s what — what do you do? Do you laugh at him or do you go back to when you were a teenager and start a tantrum? We chose to smile and he didn’t like it,” he told ABC News on Wednesday.
Martin, who was driving with Rose and their 18-month-old son in the car, said things turned serious and “scary,” however, when the other driver slowed his car down, began throwing items at their vehicle and allegedly attempted to run them off the interstate.
Rose called 911 and gave the dispatcher the Tahoe’s license plate numbers.
“He was acting like a lunatic who’s not really giving you the opportunity to get away either, you know,” Martin told KTRK. “If we speed up, he’s speeding up. If we slow down, he’s right next to us.”
Rose told the 911 dispatcher that the driver in the white Tahoe was apparently trying to goad them into a fight.
“They started slamming on their brakes and like going behind us and coming around us and flipping us off and coming, [swerving] towards us trying to knock us off the road,” she said.
In video taken by Martin, he could be heard saying the man in the Tahoe was experiencing “road rage.”
The couple said the driver of the Tahoe allegedly hit their car with his vehicle, nearly causing them to hit a wall and scraping their front end.
“He just hit us,” Martin says in the video as Rose continues speaking to the dispatcher. “We’re about to be going through Splendora on 59.”
“He’s trying to like fight us and hit us with his car and stuff. And I have it all on video,” Rose tells the dispatcher. “He’s just insane.”
During the incident, Martin told the other driver that he had a child in his car, but he said the driver said he didn’t care. Rose and Martin said that, at some point, the Tahoe driver also allegedly struck a motorcyclist and then stopped his car to help the victim. Martin told ABC News on Wednesday that the motorcyclist was OK.
Splendora police eventually arrived and arrested the driver of the white Tahoe. Police said a 7-year-old child and a woman also were in the vehicle.
Police on Wednesday identified the driver as Armando Montes and said he was being held in Montgomery County Jail on $31,520 bond. He faces charges on second-degree felony assault with a deadly weapon and second-degree felony endangering a child.
Police said there was no statement or scheduled court date or appearance for Montes yet.
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