A road rage confrontation took place on Saturday in Lebanon, Tennessee that started with two vehicles blocking a turning lane on a busy commercial road. It ended with a fight on the pavement, a struggle over a handgun, and two rounds fired. No one was injured by the gunfire. Police later identified the man they say fired the gun and charged him.
According to NewsChannel 5, the incident happened on South Cumberland Street in Lebanon, near a Chick-fil-A and a McDonald’s drive-through, when two drivers got out of their vehicles after a traffic dispute. A McDonald’s customer named Jessica Jackson, in her car with her family, recorded part of what happened next. Her video shows two men, one in a green shirt and one in a gray shirt, arguing in the roadway near a white pickup.
A woman who had been riding with the man in the gray shirt then walked up to the two men. According to Jackson, she told the green-shirted man to go back to his vehicle. Moments later, that man appeared to hit her in the face.
From there, the confrontation escalated. The green-shirted man appeared to reach for what looked like a gun, the gray-shirted man saw it and punched him, and the two ended up fighting on the pavement near the white pickup. Two rounds went off before the fight was over.
What Witnesses Say Happened
View this post on Instagram
Jessica Jackson told NewsChannel 5 that she and her family had just gone through the drive-through at a McDonald’s on South Cumberland Street in Lebanon on Saturday morning when they realized they couldn’t leave the parking lot. The turning lane out of the area, Jackson said, was completely blocked by two cars. Outside those cars, two men were already arguing in the roadway. Jackson recorded part of the encounter from inside her vehicle.
According to Jackson, the man in the green shirt, later identified by police as Robert Moore, 40, of Lebanon, appeared visibly agitated as the argument went on, while the man in the gray shirt, who had been driving a different vehicle, seemed comparatively calm.
At some point, a woman who had been riding in the gray-shirted man’s car walked up to the two men, told the man near the white truck to go back to his vehicle and pointed toward the truck, according to Jackson’s account. The man in the green shirt then appeared to hit the woman in the face.
The Fight and the Gun
According to Jackson, the man in the green shirt then appeared to reach for what she believed was a gun inside his vehicle. The man in the gray shirt, on Jackson’s account, saw what he was reaching for, walked over and punched him in the face. The two men ended up struggling on the pavement near the white pickup, with the fight moving from standing in the road to grappling on the ground.
A separate clip, NewsChannel 5 reported, showed the gray-shirted man appearing to disarm the other man during the struggle, with both still trying to control what appeared to be a handgun.
Jackson said her video stopped when her family drove away from the scene, but she told NewsChannel 5 she heard gunshots shortly afterward and yelled for her children to get down because she did not know where a stray bullet might go.
Another witness, Tierney Heisinger, told WSMV that she had been waiting for food in a McDonald’s pickup spot when she heard yelling and then gunfire. She said it was not the kind of thing she expected to see or hear during an early Saturday breakfast run.
Lebanon police later identified the man in the green shirt as Robert Moore, 40, of Lebanon, and charged him with assault and aggravated assault after, the department said, he allegedly discharged two rounds from a handgun during the road rage incident. No one was injured in the shooting, according to WSMV.
Police said the investigation remains ongoing, and NewsChannel 5 reported that Moore was released on bond later the same day.