A trucker’s dash cam captured the moment a shop owner opened fire at him in a parking lot in Alabama over the weekend.
The incident happened on Sunday, January 24th at Salter Hardware in Evergreen.
According to Fox 10 News, truck driver Jessie Ewing pulled into the parking lot of Salter Hardware in order to turn around, but store owner Jerry Salter had other ideas.
Ewing says that Salter pulled up in his pickup and became angry at Ewing, blocking his exit with the pickup. Salter allegedly then cursed Ewing out and proceeded to pull out a gun, firing shots as the truck driver pulled away.
“It didn’t intimidate me. But I didn’t think he was going to use the damn gun,” Ewing said.
In the footage, Salter can be seen exiting his pickup, and multiple gunshots can be heard.
Salter describes the incident differently. He claims that Ewing pulled into the parking lot of his hardware store and ignored requests to pull it out, and instead drove his rig within mere inches of Salter’s position.
“He was on private property, and he attempted to run me over,” Salter said.
Salter claims he only fired shots to blow-out Ewing’s tires to keep the rig from moving while he called authorities.
“We had a busted pipe right there,” Salter pointed out, attributing the damage to Ewing and his semi truck.
Salter also says this is not the first incident he has had with semi trucks in his parking lot – 10 years ago, a driver would leave trailers on the property overnight. He claims to have contacted the trucking company, but nothing was done, so he had the trailers towed away himself. Salter says he hasn’t had an issue with tractor trailers using his parking lot since.
“We’re fixing to make it so they can’t get in here,” he added.
Salter says he plans to sue Ewing and his trucking company, but investigating officers believe that Salter was the one in the wrong.
“The investigation, which is ongoing, led to the fact that there was three shots that were fired,” Police Sgt. Mike Ellis said.
“There was evidence that was collected at the scene,” he said. “And from what the victim stated and what from the witnesses stated was clearly just menacing … I would say we do have enough evidence that it is a clear case of menacing.”
However, because no one was injured and no property was damaged, Ellis says that charges against Salter would be a Class A misdemeanor at most, accompanied by a maximum of one year in jail. Ewing has 12 months from the date of the incident to file a criminal complaint – he says he plans to file sometime today, Wednesday, January 27th.
Check out the dash cam footage by clicking here.