Hammer-wielding Hilton Head driver smashes visitor’s car in apparent road rage attack
In an apparent road rage attack, an unknown suspect reportedly took a hammer to a vacationer’s car after the visitor lost his way on Hilton Head Island over the weekend. The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office had not made an arrest as of Tuesday afternoon due to a lack of leads.
Beaufort County deputies were called around 1 p.m. Saturday to the Hilton Head Island Airport, where they met a 48-year-old man from Sevierville, Tennessee. He told police he had gotten lost while driving his 2024 Nissan Armada in the Spanish Wells area and tried to turn around on Spanish Wells Road, making a three-point turn in the gravel parking lot of a warehouse near Humane Way.
After turning around, the man ended up behind a black pickup truck, possibly a Dodge, according to a sheriff’s office incident report. As he waited for the truck to pull forward, the unnamed driver exited the vehicle and began yelling, “appearing very hostile,” he told police. With his windows closed, the man couldn’t hear most of what the man was saying, but after cracking his door open he reportedly heard the driver yell “What is your problem?”
The unidentified driver then grabbed a hammer from his truck cabin and approached the man’s car, allegedly smashing both headlight covers before striking the passenger-side windshield twice. A female briefly exited the pickup to watch, but after four hammer strikes the pair climbed back into the truck and “took off” south on Spanish Wells Road toward the Muddy Creek neighborhood, the report says.
The man advised police he had a pistol on him at the time but indicated he did not feel threatened enough to use it, saying he only would have shot at the hammer-wielding driver if he had approached his driver’s side window.
A Tennessee resident says an unidentifed suspect walloped his car with a hammer after he tried to turn around Saturday afternoon while lost on Hilton Head Island. Beaufort County deputies later found shattered plastic in the parking lot of 16 Spanish Wells Road, which serves as the parking lot for an iron works warehouse.
Examining the man’s Nissan, police confirmed that both headlights were smashed and noted two 1-inch circular cracks on the windshield’s passenger side. Shortly after, a deputy returned to the parking lot off Spanish Wells Road and found “shattered clear plastic” on the ground that matched the man’s description of the damage. The business was closed and did not appear to have surveillance cameras at its front entrance, the officer noted.
The driver of the Nissan gave police a three-digit number he thought he saw on the truck’s license plate, but a database search of local plate numbers yielded no black pickup trucks, the incident report says. The officer also briefly patrolled the area around the business but found no matching vehicles.
Sheriff’s office personnel closed the case Sunday due to “no further leads to continue an investigation,” the report says. Department spokesperson said deputies could still make an arrest if they spotted the suspect vehicle in the area. Investigators were not sure if the suspect was affiliated with the business where the attack took place.
Crimes fueled by road rage are far from uncommon in Beaufort County, local data shows. The sheriff’s office reported at least 10 such incidents in a yearlong period ending in May 2023, with most involving drivers flashing weapons at other travelers. A majority of the cases do not end in arrests, usually due to a lack of evidence or neither party wishing to pursue charges after a mutual altercation.
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