Tech Exec Sentenced to 6 Months for Road-Rage Battery

A Kentfield man was sentenced to six months in the Marin County jail Wednesday for the road rage beating of a truck driver in Mill Valley last year.

Jeffrey Smock, 41, was convicted by a jury in June of felony battery causing serious bodily injury and misdemeanor assault of Roman Laskowski, now 58, of Corte Madera, on April 16, 2014.

In addition to jail time, Marin County Superior Court Judge Kelly Vieira Simmons sentenced Smock to three years probation, defense attorney Gerald Schwartzbach said.

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• Bicyclist Pleads Not Guilty to Mill Valley Road Rage Assault on Truck Driver

Assistant District Attorney Barry Borden said the prosecution asked Simmons to sentence Smock to nine months in jail. Smock faced a maximum term of fours years in prison, Borden said.

Smock was riding a bicycle at East Blithedale Avenue and Camino Alto in Mill Valley and Laskowski was driving a truck that Smock claimed clipped him with its mirror.

The prosecution alleged Smock attacked Laskowski outside the truck and kept punching him while Laskowski was on the ground.

Schwartzbach said the jury did not find Smock caused great bodily injury to Laskowski, and he asked the judge to reduce the felony battery charge to a misdemeanor. Simmons denied the request.

“The total fight lasted less than a minute in the life of a 41-year-old man with three children who was suffering from post traumatic stress,” Schwartzbach said.

“Once he got hit in the head, his mind went blank. He was in a dissociated state where his mind was not aware of his physical behavior,” Schwartzbach said.

Smock was suffering from post-traumatic stress at the time of the incident because he was in a small plane crash in Oregon that killed his father-in-law in 2012, Schwartzbach said.

Schwartzbach said Smock, a tech entrepreneur, became a “poster boy to people who hate bicyclists and financially wealthy people.”

Schwartzbach argued Smock acted in self-defense and there were conflicting versions of the road rage incident during the trial.

He said a witnesses said Laskowski ran after Smock while he was still on his bicycle at the intersection and the fight occurred 20 feet from Laskowski’s truck.

Borden said Deputy District Attorney Kendra Rudolph presented evidence that the battery Smock inflicted caused serious bodily injury and the jury agreed.

• --Bay City News Service, photo courtesy of Iron Data