DENVER — An everyday drive for a Denver family turns into fear when they encounter rage on the road.
They captured the aggressive driver on video.
One look at her phone transports Belinda Quintana back to Sunday night–when danger drove into her life and that of her sons.
“He kept sliding everywhere. He was intoxicated. I wasn’t sure if he was drunk or high,” says Belinda’s son, Javier, 16.
Quintana stays back to avoid a collision, but then he slows to get behind Quintana’s car.
“He came up behind me, trying to ram me from behind,” says Quintana.
Quintana then turns into a car wash, hoping he’ll drive by–but he doesn’t.
“When we got to the car wash, he was right behind us like a train,” says Javier.
“When he stopped, he didn’t go to no stalls, to no vacuums. He was just at the back looking at us. His face was so angry,” she says.
He also started fidgeting with something in his waistband.
“I thought, ‘How am I going to defend my mom and brother, if he does something, if he has a gun?’ That’s the only thing that scared me,” says Javier.
So they took off.
“We left and he caught up to us,” says Javier.
That’s when his mom told him to record the vehicle’s license plate.
“I looked back and I saw a truck trying to ram us. That’s when I was scared,” says Salvador, 11.
The video shows a driver speed up behind the family. You see him weave.
You can hear his mom’s frantic pleas for the boys to call 911. She eventually makes the call.
“I am on the road and a guy is trying to crash me from behind,” she tells a dispatcher.
Finally, the driver speeds into the wrong lane and out of their lives.
“When he turned I looked at him and his face was mad,” says Salvador.
Police say the family did just about everything right. If you come into the path of a dangerous driver, stay calm, get out of their way, and call police.
Christine Downs, Denver Police spokesperson says you should stay on the phone with dispatch and if you can, pull into an area with a lot of people around.
Quintana mistakenly thought by calling 911 to report the road rage, police would automatically investigate it. But she has to file a police report, which she says she will.
The suspect vehicle is a brown Jeep Cherokee with Colorado plate number 374-WUU.