A smiling pickup truck driver was arrested on suspicion of beheading an elderly woman during a four-hour line of cars as residents waited to return to their homes in the Palisades fire zone.
Nick Clark, an independent creative director in Los Angeles, posted a video of his altercation with an impatient driver on his Instagram account on Saturday.
He approached the driver in a silver Chevrolet Silverado and detonated it.
“Here's a guy who cut off a little old lady,” Clark said as he approached the pickup, laughing and pointing the camera at the driver.
The driver, whose window was rolled down, nodded at Clark, frowned, but remained silent at first.
“The cops are clocking your Silverado, but they're not letting you in,” he says.
“Good luck,” the unidentified pickup driver replied with a grin. “Have a wonderful day.”
“I hope you had a great day,” Clark retorts sarcastically.
The creative director then asked if she wanted to share her name in the video, adding that she had 35,000 followers on YouTube.
“Hey, whatever, dude. Good job,” the driver says to Clark. “Have you ever cut anyone off in LA?”
“I certainly wasn't in the middle of a pandemic or a fire,” Clark responds.
The driver then told her he was at a “stoplight” before cutting the woman off, but Clark stopped him before he could continue driving.
“You know how it works,” says the director. “Are you really that stupid? Are you really that stupid? I can't believe it.”
Before the video ends, the creative director announces that he thinks he's just a “rich guy” and a “bastard.”
In the video's caption, Clark said the driver “just tried to decapitate a little old woman and her adult son while we all stood in line for 4 hours trying to get to our homes in the #PalisadesFire zone.” Explained in detail.
“This man tried to sneak in front of her while she got out of the car and looked for her son, but he found her son wandering off.”
Clark said he “politely called out BS” before filming the altercation, then left to point it out to police.
The creative director added that the fires had shown him “the best and the worst in humanity.”
“This man thinks his pain is worth more than anyone else's pain. Where did he learn that?” he asked.
“He said to me, 'I thought we had a chance.' What the heck? Look out for each other. We all have to be better for each other…”
Mr Clark asked for the public's help in identifying the man in the post.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said Sunday that about 150,000 people in the county remain under evacuation orders and more than 700 residents have been evacuated to nine shelters.
The death toll from the still-raging Los Angeles wildfires has risen to 24, with at least 16 still missing, according to tragic reports. update Sunday evening, from the Los Angeles County Coroner.
The majority of the victims, 16 people, died in the Eaton Fire, and eight died in the Palisades Fire, the two largest fires to hit the county.
The new death toll makes the Eaton Fire the fifth deadliest wildfire in California history.
