NORTH FORT MYERS, Fla.— A Vietnam veteran said a man driving a white pickup truck was tailing him with high beams near U.S. 41 and Pondella Road.
Jerry Greene, 73, said when he came to the intersection, he got out of his vehicle to tell the man his high beams were on.
That’s when the driver hit the veteran, knocking him to the ground and badly injuring him.
Greene reported it happened around 7:30 p.m. last Thursday as it was getting dark.
Traffic cameras captured the white pickup the suspect was driving with his high beams on.
“This guy is on my butt. I guess I’m not going fast enough for him,” Greene recalled.
Greene said a man jumped out of the white pickup and approached him, ready to fight. Greene said he didn’t want to fight but asked him to turn his low beams on.
The suspect punched Greene in the face, knocking him to the ground, busting his teeth, shattering his hip, and leaving him badly bruised.
“He knocked two of my teeth up into the roof of my mouth,” Greene said from his hospital room.
The man then jumped into the white pickup and sped off.
“I’m lying in the road, behind my truck, and people are tooting their horn,” Greene explained.
It brought back horrid memories of an incident during his military time in Vietnam.
“They fired a mortar round behind me. I wasn’t ready for it. It knocked me down,” Greene recalled of the 1969 incident.
Greene’s caregiver and friend, Laura Coslick, believes someone saw something last Thursday night.
“These days, people record everything. Someone has to have seen this or recorded it,” Coslick said.
Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said his office is using a real-time intelligence center and working all leads.
LCSO reports an increase in road rage incidents. In October of 2022, the sheriff’s office investigated 238 cases, and already in 2023, they have had 348 cases reported.
Marceno announced the creation of a road rage unit to combat dangerous drivers as the roads become more congested with drivers.
The sheriff said anyone who may have seen something should report it to LCSO.