Lane-Merge Battle Turns Into Road Rage, Bloody Nose

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A case of two drivers wanting to merge into the same lane turned into road rage and battery charges for one of the people involved.

According to a Gwinnett Police incident report, two women were driving north on Winder Highway from State Road 124 around 2:30 p.m. Sunday, March 1, when the two vehicles reached the point where two lanes merged into one.

The officer met the two women at the East Pricinct, where the victim told police the other woman was driving a gold-colored Lexus in the right lane when it sped past her Nissan Frontier pickup to get through the merge first.

At that point, the victim said she honked her horn at the Lexus. The suspect then checked her brakes in front of the pickup several times, the police report stated.

The victim told police she tried to take a left turn at Cedars Road to get away, but the woman turned her car sharply, acting like she was going to ram her. The victim said that made her swerve and almost hit an oncoming car, so she continued on Winder Highway, this time in front of the suspect.

The suspect followed the pickup until both vehicles reached Ga. 316, the victim said. The suspect got out of the car, the two women argued, and the suspect allegedly reached into the car, grabbed the victim’s face and pulled her hair. The victim had scratches on her face and a bloody nose, police wrote in the report.

The suspect, identified as Wanda Mathis of Auburn in the police report, told police a similar story, except she characterized the woman as the aggressor on the road. It was the victim who checked her breaks, she said. She also said she never went up to the victim’s window, and when she tried to leave, the victim followed her. She told police she called 911 and was told that police couldn’t do anything without the license plate number.

The officer said there was no record of Mathis calling 911.

A witness also talked to police, and corroborated the victim’s story,

Mathis was charged with battery.