Friday evening around 6:30 pm (6-25-2010) I was at the local Outback Steakhouse having some food when someone went crazy out in the parking lot.
This psychopath (who was supposedly on some type of drugs, according to a female passenger in the back seat of the vehicle with him) went on a rampage in his Jeep Grand Cherokee after he got mad at a slow driver on the main street next to the restaurant. He turned off that road (using the entrance into the shopping center) and instead of heading down the entrance way to the main parking lot he went over the curb and thru the grass heading toward the Outback parking lot. There's ruts thru the grass where he was spinning his tires the whole time, those ruts led right to my truck which was parked in the furthest possible parking spot from Outback.
He ended up smashing into the passenger side rear corner of my truck caving in the whole front of his truck up against the front wheels and causing his Jeep to spin around 90 degrees to his original direction of impact. What's even more amazing is that the impact moved my 8500 lb Longbed Dually Crewcab Diesel F350 Pickup truck 5 feet from it's original location - with a Jeep Grand Cherokee that weighs about 1/2 what my truck does!
But this maniac was just getting started, he then backed away from my truck and smashed into the tree that was now immediately right behind his Jeep. It was such a tight fit that he repeatedly went back and forth smashing into my truck and the tree trying to free his vehicle - at this point the woman in the back seat bailed out of the Jeep and nearly got crushed by this guys actions. Luckily a big guy who was in the parking lot had run over and grabbed the woman from getting hit and actually threw her up into the back of my truck's bed. The idiot driver then broke free and plowed into the big guys Ford Expedition parked about 40 feet away, he backed up, then hit it again, and again, and a 4th time in the side of that SUV. After that he shot across the lot about 50 feet and plowed into a Toyota Camry, then looped around and smashed into the back of an Audi across the isle. Finally the impact with the 4th vehicle apparently broke something in the drive line of the Jeep and it would no longer move - though he was shifting back and forth like a mad man trying to get going again. My truck was probably the oldest being a 2003, I believe all the other vehicles that he hit were newer than mine.
At this point the big guy in the parking lot got to the Jeep and made sure the driver wouldn't be going anywhere by firmly grasping onto this morons neck with both hands!
Eventually an employee of the restaurant (who knew it was my truck that got hit) came and told me about the chaos outside. By the time I got outside there were 5 squad cars and about 30 people out in the parking lot. As I got to my truck I saw the trail of antifreeze on the ground from the Jeep, it started where he smashed into my truck and led to all the other vehicles he hit. At this point there was pretty much a mob that wanted some time alone with this guy, in fact I overheard several people telling the cops they could let this guy out of their car and the cops could just leave and the group would deal with this guy!
To make things worse this all happened on private property and the driver was from Wisconsin which didn't have a mandatory vehicle insurance law up until just a few weeks ago, that law just went into effect on June 1, 2010 - at this point no one knows if this guy had insurance on this vehicle or not. I was also told by my insurance company today that since his actions were intentional that no insurance carrier (they know of) would cover any of the damage to his vehicle or the other four.
According to the article in the newspaper the guy was charged with Reckless Driving and 4 counts of FELONY criminal damage. Even his girlfriend in the front passenger seat went to jail due to outstanding warrants for....driving offenses....go figure!
The estimate right now sits at $5300 damage.
You just can't fix stupid!
