By Joe Johnson
A Clarke County grand jury this week indicted an Athens woman for an alleged road rage incident last month that ended after she attempted to run down a Georgia State Patrol trooper.
Alisha Dashawn Mitchell, 27, of Campbell Drive was charged with aggressive driving and three counts of aggravated assault, according to the indictment filed Tuesday in Clarke County Superior Court.
According to Athens-Clarke County police, the incident began early the evening of July 12 when Mitchell claimed another car cut her off on the Athens Perimeter near Olympic Drive.
The driver of the other car noticed a gray BMW following her and continued following when she exited onto College Station Road, according to police.
The 25-year-old woman told the officer she became frightened, so she called her husband, who is a Georgia State Patrol trooper and was exercising at a fitness club in Willowood Shopping Center on Lexington Road.
The trooper told his wife to drive to his location, where other witnesses told police that the woman in the BMW was driving erratically in the parking lot and came close to hitting the man, who jumped onto her car multiple times to avoid being hit, according to a police incident report.
The victim said she tried to drive over to get her husband, but that the Mitchell exited the BMW with a knife and said to her something to the effect of “you wanna get some of this, too?”
A responding officer reported that when he arrived, he saw the suspect holding a large knife and approaching the trooper in the parking lot. When other officers arrived, the suspect tried to conceal the knife, but dropped it on the pavement, police said.
Mitchell reportedly told police said that while she was driving on the perimeter, she was cut off by a Dodge Charger and she felt the driver did it on purpose. She claimed that she followed the other driver to Willowood because she wanted to talk to the driver, but when she arrived a man approached and elbowed her window, yelled at her and jumped on her car.
Mitchell, who was released from jail on a $4,600 bond, is scheduled to be arraigned on Sept. 19.