Road rage victim describes bizarre attack with crackers, bat

FRIENDSWOOD, TX (KTRK) -- A road rage incident turned into a bizarre food fight, Friendswood police say. Officers were called out after a minor motorist-pedestrian encounter turned violent.

It all started in the early afternoon on Thursday, December 22. The victim told police he had turned onto Winding Way from S. Friendswood Drive and passed by a pedestrian. The pedestrian yelled at the driver to slow down and threw crackers at his vehicle.

Derrick Reed described the attack.

"I turned from 518 this way here and a guy was walking in my direction," Reed said.

That's when the first Ritz cracker hit Reed's Jeep.

"I asked him, I said, 'Hey. Did you mean to hit my vehicle with this?' He said, 'Yeah. You were speeding.' I'm like, 'What are you talking about? That's pretty rude to throw that.' And he takes the whole box and dumps it it my vehicle," Reed said.

Reed couldn't take the high road.

"He was basically laughing about the fact that he just dumped a bunch of crackers on somebody's vehicle. So I backed up, and I threw the crackers back at his direction and said, 'You can have your crackers back.' At that point, he attempted to reach in and grab me," Reed said.

Reed said the man was still holding on to the Jeep when he drove off with his passenger seat covered in cracker crumbs.

"I didn't know it at the time, but his cellphone had dropped into the backseat of my vehicle. I left that scene thinking this was all over with. I actually called my friend on my way to the house and said, 'You're not going to believe what happened. This is totally crazy, totally off-the-wall funny,'" Reed said.

But the story didn't stay funny for long. Reed stopped about a mile away where he was fixing a roof at a client's house. He believes the suspect tracked the lost cellphone to his Jeep.

"He was very angry. He struck my vehicle several times with the bat and caused pretty extensive damage to it. He kept yelling at me like I stole his cellphone," Reed said.

Glass flew into the Jeep, cutting Reed's arm and neck. Reed then got out and started taking video with his cellphone.

"It was absolutely insane. I tried to give the guy the benefit of the doubt when he threw the first cracker in my vehicle. I thought maybe it was a mistake, but at that point he just continued to escalate it and he was not satisfied until he got the last swing of the bat in," said Reed.