Evan McKenna
·4 min read
Police have not made any arrests in the days following a grisly, racially charged brawl in the middle of a Hilton Head highway during the afternoon rush hour. Four people and three cars were involved in the road rage dispute that quickly turned violent.
Around 4:30 p.m. on June 15, Beaufort County deputies received a report of “people fighting in the roadway” of U.S. 278, where one person had allegedly pulled out a gun. Arriving to find nothing but typical cross-island traffic, police instead followed an EMS call from a woman who said she had been injured in the fight.
At the woman’s apartment on Beach City Road, officers found the white north-island resident with a “large lump” on the back of her head, red marks on her face and small cuts around her ankle, knee and chest. As she was loaded into an ambulance, the woman told police the incident “started off as road rage”: While her husband was driving their white Nissan Maxima across the Hilton Head bridges, a Black man driving a black Jeep Grand Cherokee almost ran into the back of their car and was “slamming on brakes” with a child in the car, according to her interview found in an incident report from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.
A female acquaintance of the Jeep driver, also Black, was following close behind in a “little red Mustang,” the woman said. The four occupants of the three vehicles reportedly began hurling insults at each other while driving alongside each other on the highway — including racial slurs that would soon bring the two women onto the asphalt.
The couple showed police a cellphone video taken during the high-speed dispute. Over the sound of honking and traffic, the deputy noted hearing one male yell “Ima f*** you up boy” through his rolled-down car window, as well as verbal taunts like “Come on, come on ... you little pu***” as the vehicles sped past one another.
The white woman also yelled racial slurs at the other drivers, the officer noted, which escalated the situation further as the two Black drivers berated her use of the term. In response, the woman said “Well, how ‘bout you’re just ugly?” according to the report.
The woman was then heard saying “She about to say I won’t get out ... Baby let me the f*** out!” as she demanded her husband stop the car. The recording ends with audio of the woman unbuckling her seatbelt.
A witness who had stopped at a traffic signal near Spanish Wells Road later recounted the brawl to police over the phone. Looking behind her, she saw a white woman and Black woman scuffling on the asphalt while a white male tried to break up the fight. A shirtless Black man then climbed out of another parked vehicle and reportedly pointed a pistol at the white man, she said.
“This all happened very quickly,” said the witness, who had driven away and pulled over before calling law enforcement. She did not recall hearing any gunshots.
The injured woman “promised” police that she did not intend to fight the other woman, who had “started swinging on (her)“ before they somehow ended up on the ground. She also alleged the Black man kicked her in the head against the concrete, leaving lasting aches in her head and lower jaw. Tufts of her hair were falling out as well because her combatant had yanked it, she told police.
Neither member of the couple could give “a definitive inciting incident that started the road rage,” the officer noted in the report, but the woman advised that “both vehicles had cut each other off.”
Deputies later identified the driver of the Jeep, but investigation into the brawl was still underway as of Wednesday, according to Master Sgt. Danny Allen of the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office. No shots were fired and none of the four parties involved were seriously injured.
Crimes fueled by road rage are far from uncommon in Beaufort County, local data shows. The sheriff’s office reported at least 10 such incidents in a yearlong period ending in May 2023, with most involving drivers flashing weapons at other travelers. These occurrences are most common where traffic is heavy and tensions are high — like the bridges to Hilton Head Island.
