Takedown

The LA Weekly's Marc Cooper recounts an incident from the recent storms involving a guy in a wet leather jacket on Sunset near Vine:

As I sat idle in a bottleneck, my wipers hopelessly sloshing the water back and forth, I could make him out standing in the middle of the eastbound left-turn lane. His aged Toyota had apparently been rear-ended by the gold Lexus behind him. As the snarled traffic honked away, he was furiously yelling and pounding the driver’s window on the Lexus, challenging the driver to get out. A half-minute later, the Lexus door finally opened and a dark-haired woman 10 years his senior and trundled in a brown knit sweater cautiously emerged.

The leather-jacket guy’s rant only escalated, and he suddenly grabbed at the woman’s shoulder. Thinking of the Hollywood Division station only a few blocks away, I grabbed my cell phone and punched in 911. But before I could hit the "send" button, the woman shook off his hand, dropped her right arm way low, and then snapped back with a looping Sunday punch right in the guy’s kisser.

The single, direct hit shut his mouth, buckled his knees and sent him flat out onto the asphalt. As surprised onlookers moved in to sort out the mess and the traffic in front of me once again began to crawl, he lay sprawled, face-up to the indifferent rain.

The guy was a loser before he laid his hand on her. If you're in a crash, chances are good it was an accident. Don't rant and threaten. Stay cool, exchange info, move on. Anything else ought to be a crime.