By Joe Johnson
An Athens woman was arrested Friday after she allegedly drove a car toward an off-duty Georgia State Patrol trooper and threatened his wife with a knife, according to an Athens-Clarke County police report.
A 25-year-old woman reportedly told police that at about 5:45 p.m. she was being followed on the Athens Perimeter by a gray BMW, and after she exited the highway at College Station Road the BMW still followed her and continued to do so on Barnett Shoals Road.
The woman said she was frightened and so she phoned her husband, an off-duty state trooper who was working out at the Anytime Fitness facility at the Willowood Square shopping center, located not far away at the corner of Gaines School and Lexington roads, according to police.
The trooper told his wife to drive to the fitness center to meet him, police said, and when the woman pulled into the Willowood Square parking lot the BMW entered the lot behind her, according to police.
The driver was later identified by police as Alisha Dashawn Mitchell, 27 of Campbell Drive.
The off-duty trooper reportedly approached and “engaged” Mitchell to distract her from his wife, police said, at which time trooper’s wife saw that “Mitchell was going toward him with her car, so she decided to loop around and try to pick her husband up to protect him.”
Mitchell then allegedly got out of her car with a knife and approached the open driver’s window of the other car and “stated something to the effect of, ‘You wanna get some of this too?’” according to the police report.
Based on the accounts of the involved parties as well as witnesses at the scene, Mitchell was arrested and charged with two counts of aggravated assault and single counts of aggressive driving and reckless driving.
The police report did not contain any statements from Mitchell concerning why she allegedly was following the other woman’s car.
Employees of Anytime fitness reportedly viewed security camera footage of the incident, of which they planned to make a copy to provide to police, according to the report.
Mitchell was released from the Clarke County Jail Saturday afternoon, upon posting bonds totaling $4,600, according to the jail’s website.