Road rage turns into shooting at Plaza Midwood intersection

CHARLOTTE — An argument at an intersection in Charlotte’s Plaza Midwood neighborhood turned into a shooting as witnesses looked on.

Video from Instagram user @thecheekybeen was recorded and shared on social media that shows the second half of the incident.

It happened Sunday afternoon on Central Avenue near Pecan Avenue.

The video shows an SUV parked behind a black sedan, and the driver gets out and hits the back windshield of the sedan with some sort of stick or rod.

The sedan begins driving away and turns left, and the driver from the SUV goes back into his vehicle. That’s when you can hear a gunshot, and you see the top of the SUV’s windshield get hit by a bullet. The driver appears to recoil inside of the SUV.

Channel 9′s Evan Donovan spoke with the driver who said he had shots fired at him, and he said he was going to lunch with his 73-year-old father, who just had surgery.

The driver told Donovan it all started when he honked at the sedan because it didn’t move when the light turned green.

“Figured he was on his phone, so I gave him a friendly toot on his horn. Immediately, he whipped around, swerved around my car, cut me off, and stopped, tried to get us in multiple accidents,” the driver told Donovan.

He says the erratic driving continued for a few minutes until he threw water on the other car.

“I was also in the wrong, I did engage with him,” he said. “And that prompted him to get out and come up and pour a water bottle on me ... in my car, through the window.”

He says the other driver smashed the mirror on his dad’s car and wouldn’t let them go. The video shared on social media shows the mirror dangling at the intersection, and that’s when things escalated.

“Got angry and let adrenaline take over and grabbed a stick and smashed his rear windshield,” the driver said. “He ran the red light, pulled the gun and took a shot at us.”

Video shows the gunshot, and the man says a bullet fragment hit his father near his eye, about an inch away from where he just had surgery 20 minutes earlier.

Donovan asked him if he would engage again.

“Hell no,” he said.

Channel 9 obtained a police report that says the two drivers didn’t know each other. The police report confirms the SUV was shot once.

Police said they haven’t found the other driver yet.

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