If we’re honest, most of us can admit to occasionally having a touch of road rage. When you’re in a hurry and people are driving slowly or recklessly, it can be everything from irritating to infuriating. For the most part, no one hears our raging. All of that outrage stays inside the vehicle, silenced by our car windows and the sounds of the road.
But that wasn’t the case for one man in Massachusetts who reportedly violently attacked a single mother after they were in a minor fender bender.
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Hailea Soares said the man in front of her kept slamming on his brakes.
Hailea Soares, a mother of two, was driving at 9 a.m. on a Friday morning in Attleboro, Massachusetts. She found herself behind a man who kept hitting his brakes.
“He kept slamming on his brakes and then when we got to the intersection, he hit a light and he was in front of me,” Soares told WHDH. “As soon as we went through, we didn’t even make it across and he slammed on the brakes, so I hit him.”
No one wants to deal with the hassle of being involved in a car crash. But with this incident things went from inconvenient to violent.
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'I remember thinking, ‘I’m in the air right now,'' Soares recalled.
Gladior Kwesiah, the Rhode Island man Soares hit, stormed out of his car and then allegedly pulled Soares from hers. She claimed she was simply trying to take pictures of the damage. But she says Kwesiah snatched the phone from her.
“I tried to defend myself and then he picked me up, and that was when the woman got the video of me bring thrown to the ground,” Soares said. “I remember thinking, ‘I’m in the air right now. I’m in the air.’” She says that when Kwesiah threw her on the pavement a second time, she wasn’t able to get up.
Kwesiah was arrested on the scene.
Police say Soares has a broken knee, a broken foot, a significant injury to her eye socket, and a serious injury to her skull. She was treated at the Study Memorial Hospital.
Witnesses captured the entire violent altercation on video. The Attleboro Police Department arrested Kwesiah and charged him with assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon serious injury resulting, malicious destruction of property, and operating without a license. He is held on a $25,000 bond.
Soares is happy she was able to return to her children.
In the days since the incident, a family friend set up a GoFundMe. Funds will help with medical expenses, her children’s needs, and covering rent and utilities while she is unable to work. So far, they’ve raised over $31,000 of their $40,000 goal.
Soares said she’s just happy she was able to go home to her children. “He was just being a jerkoff on the road,” she said in an interview with ABC-TV News. “I don’t know if he was having a bad day. I don’t know what that was, but if that’s the type of person he is, I don’t think he belongs in society with the rest of us.”
