The SUV of an Omaha woman was repeatedly rammed from behind in a Taco Bell drive-thru lane by a man who later got into the woman’s vehicle and drove it into the concrete base around a light pole.
“It was crazy,” said the 22-year-old woman, who recorded the encounter on her cellphone. “I felt like I went through a near-death experience.”
The woman told police that the incident began about 1:40 a.m. Monday as she was ordering food over the drive-thru intercom at the Taco Bell north of 72nd Street and Crown Point Avenue. Suddenly, she felt a jolt and realized that her 2003 Kia Sorento had been hit from behind by a Volkswagen Jetta.
In a phone interview Tuesday, the woman said she got out of the vehicle and asked the male driver of the Jetta to back up so she could check for damage. He and his female passenger denied hitting her car.
“I told them that if there was damage, we would have to call police,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of not being identified because she feared for her safety. “They wouldn’t back up and started to get real mad. He was really hostile.”
The Jetta driver and the female passenger began yelling at her to stop recording. The man then got out of the car, snatched her phone from her hand and threw it into a snowbank.
The woman retrieved the phone and can be heard on the video saying police had been called.
“That’s when he got back in his car and began going full speed ahead, ramming my car,” the woman said. “I got back in my car to try and get it out of the way. Someone (from Taco Bell) said, ‘Get out of the car, get out of the car. It’s not worth getting killed.’ ”
The woman, who is black, said the female passenger in the Jetta, who is white, began yelling the N-word at her. In the police report on the incident, a Taco Bell employee told officers that the Jetta passenger tried to punch the Kia driver but the employee blocked the punch and separated the two women.
The Kia driver retreated into the restaurant, still recording, when the male Jetta driver, who also is white, got into the woman’s Kia and drove it into the concrete base around a pole.
The man then got back in the Jetta and drove off.
The Jetta appeared to have out-of-state plates, possibly from Colorado.
The Kia driver said the front and rear bumpers of her vehicle will need to be replaced.
“These people need to be prosecuted,” she said.
