Road rage attack in Massachusetts ends with driver turning around to mow down woman (prosecutors)

A violent drive-by altercation in Massachusetts left a woman dead and a man behind bars last week, authorities said.

Ryan Sweatt had “an apparent road rage incident” with another car on Route 85 in Hopkinton Thursday evening and struck a woman who was getting out of the other car, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office wrote in a press release Friday.

The 26-year-old woman, Destini Decoff, died Sunday from these injuries, her mother Tracy Decoff wrote on Facebook.

At some point during Thursday’s confrontation, officials said, some of the occupants of his car got out and Sweatt turned his Honda Civic around and struck the woman “at a high rate of speed.”

Sweatt told police that Decoff and four men got out of their car and surrounded his car, according to a police report obtained by CBS News. One of them had a knife, he said, and he shouted at the officers who responded: “They’re trying to kill me!” »

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The 36-year-old Milford resident was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon causing serious bodily injury, endangerment and marked lane violation, according to the office of the district attorney, who could not immediately be reached for comment on whether additional charges would be filed in light of his death.

A witness told police that Sweatt “chose to turn around” and “knew what he was doing” when he turned around and hit Decoff with his Civic, according to CBS. Prosecutors said surveillance footage from the scene supported the witness’s account.

“He turned around a few times and he could have kept going,” said Brett Martin, who watched the scene unfold on Route 85 from Cornell’s Irish Pub. “He chose to turn around. He knew what he was doing when he walked towards that girl.”

Martin said the impact caused Decoff’s clothes to fly off as she was thrown from the vehicle.

“I saw her in mid-air coming down toward the street,” Martin told CBS. “Her jacket must have been 20 feet away from her. However, she was hit and her clothes flew off.”

Martin said he ran to the scene, grabbed Decoff’s jacket and covered the bleeding woman.

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Prosecutors said a police officer saw Sweatt speeding away from the scene after the 6:30 p.m. incident, CBS reported. When police caught up with him, his windshield was damaged. He allegedly got out of the car shouting: “They are trying to kill me!”

Sweatt told police Decoff started the altercation by stepping in front of him and slamming on the brakes as he was driving home from work, according to court documents. Then, he said, Decoff and four men got out of their vehicle and threatened him.

The district attorney’s office did not say whether Decoff was driving before she was struck.

Following the district attorney’s office’s announcement, Decoff’s mother wrote on Facebook that Sweatt was “charged with everything he should have been.”

“She was in the car with some friends when the car behind them was on their bumper,” the mother wrote. “The car stopped, they got out of the vehicle and this car tried to run them over.”

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Decoff’s mother wrote on Facebook that the woman had part of her skull removed to accommodate a brain hemorrhage and was put on a ventilator due to two collapsed lungs after being shorn in Hopkinton last Thursday.

With a broken rib, shoulder and shin, as well as facial disfigurement that required plastic surgery, the elder Decoff wrote that her daughter was “literally injured from head to toe.”

Last Friday, Decoff’s mother wrote that she “jumped that mf was burning straight in hell” with “every ounce of herself.”

On Sunday, she wrote that her “firstborn (and) best friend” had died.

Sweatt has pleaded not guilty, according to court records, and is scheduled to appear in Framingham District Court on April 10. His lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.

Original article source: Road rage attack in Massachusetts ends with driver turning around to mow down woman (prosecutors)