Woman arrested in bat-wielding road rage incident caught on video
Police have arrested a woman in connection with a disturbing act of road rage that involved three motorists who attacked each other, one with a bat, on a busy Chicago highway.
Sheniqka Thomas, 26, was arrested and charged on Wednesday after video showed her cutting in front of a grey Hyundai while swinging a baseball bat out of the window, police said.
Once in front of the car, Thomas jumped out and smashed the bat onto the hood of the other car. The situation escalated when a passenger in that car got out and confronted Thomas.
"The investigation revealed a black vehicle, later determined to be driven by Thomas, cut off a silver vehicle who was driving in the left lane," the Illinois State Police said in a statement. "After cutting off the silver vehicle, Thomas exited her vehicle holding a baseball bat and hit the silver vehicle with the baseball bat."
Cellphone video taken from a vehicle behind the two cars showed the two women throwing punches and pulling each other's hair. Things hit a fever pitch when the driver of the Hyundai exited the vehicle and tried to wrestle the bat away in an apparent effort to protect her passenger.
She eventually gained control of the bat before the video cut off with her about to swing. One witness said the two women in the Hyundai appeared to be a mother and daughter.
"I've never seen nothing like that before. … It looked like they were doing a lot of slapping at first and grabbing, but then they started to do a lot of punching," the witness told Chicago ABC station WLS. "It looks like the older lady was trying to grab the young lady by her hair to get her off her daughter."
Thomas was arrested on charges of criminal damage to property and received traffic citations for improper lane usage, failure to signal and improper parking on a roadway.
She was out on bond late Wednesday.
