A Lilburn man believes he’s lucky to be alive after a road rage incident ended in shots fired.
The victim, who we’re only identifying as Chris, was driving home from work when he says a man pulled a gun on him when he refused to let him cut in front of him on Rockbridge Road. Chris showed the man his own gun, but the man pulled in behind him and followed him several miles into a subdivision where Chris confronted him.
“He threatened to shoot me in the face again and then he keyed my car with the muzzle of his pistol, fired a shot into the backseat of my car, and then continued to drag his pistol up the rest of the back of my car,” Chris tells WSB’s Sandra Parrish.
The man, identified by Lilburn Police as John Armitage, is then accused of turning around and driving towards Chris who was standing outside his car holding his gun while calling 911. He also fired a shot at Armitage.
He then followed after Armitage, while still on the phone with police, relaying the man’s tag number.
Armitage was arrested later that evening at his home in Lilburn.
“To take it to that length when nothing actually happened, there was no collision of vehicles… to take it to that level is just beyond my comprehension,” says Chris.
The bullet that pierced his car lodged in the seat on the opposite side of the vehicle. Chris says had his 8-year-old son been in the car, as he often is, he would have been hit.
“The trajectory of the bullet, if my son was sitting there, he would have been shot in the head,” he says.
Armitage has bonded out of the Gwinnett County Jail on charges of aggravated assault and criminal trespass.