Road Rage: Man Attacks Car With Kids Inside — Enraged At Wait To Pull Out Of McDonald’s Lot, Cops Say

In a terrifying road rage attack, according to police in West Palm Beach, Florida, a 54-year-old man went berserk with a steel crowbar, savagely smashing a car with two small children and their grandmother inside — all because he flipped out with fury over waiting to pull out of a McDonald’s parking lot.

The incident took place on July 6 when mom Nadia McLean took her two small kids and theit grandma, McLean’s own mother, to McDonald’s in West Palm Beach and then they planned a shopping trip in a nearby mini-mall.

But as they were waiting to pull out of the McDonald’s parking lot and turn onto a road called South Military Trail, right around 1 p.m. on that Monday following the holiday weekend, McLean was alarmed by the driver behind their car, in an SUV, who repeatedly honked his horn, yelled and shouted profanities at them, apparently because McLean could not pull her blue Infiniti into the heavy traffic on the road.

Finally, she was able to merge into traffic, but she doubled back into the parking lot of the Cresthaven shopping center when her mother remembered another errand she wanted to carry out there.

But the man in the SUV — later identified as Anthony Ritz Jr. of West Palm Beach — followed them into the parking lot.

As soon as McLean stopped her car, witnesses said, Ritz jumped out of his SUV wielding a crowbar. He ran directly to McLean’s car and immediately swung the weapon at the car’s windshield and hood.

As McLean screamed for him to stop, pleading that her children were in the car, he continued to batter the vehicle, causing shattered glass to strike and injure McLean’s mother. Fortunately, her injuries were not serious — but the situation certainly could have been much worse — as previous road rage incidents such as the tragedy described in the Inquisitr story at this link have been.

The Infiniti’s damage was described by the deputies as “extensive.”

At last, the out-of-control attacker ran away and drove off in his SUV — but McLean, despite being so upset that should not describe what happened to sheriff’s deputies for a full 30 minutes, did manage to write down the license plate number of the SUV.

The deputies traced the number to a vehicle owned by Anthony Ritz. When the deputies were able to find what they believed was the man’s home, they spoke to a woman who said she was his ex-girlfriend and that she had kicked him out of the house for good just a few days earlier “because of his aggressive behavior,” the sheriff’s report said, as reported by The Sun-Sentinel newspaper.

The deputies eventually located Anthony Ritz, who was arrested last Monday and is now being held without bail, charged with aggravated assault in the frightening road rage attack.

[Image: Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office]