The men who videoed a road rage beating on the I-5 in LA earlier this month were chastised for recording instead of helping. Now the two men shown beating the offending motorist have been arrested, likely due to the viral cell phone video.
WARNING: the video is violent.
The two men, Edres Ramirez, 27, and David Mendez, 21, turned themselves in yesterday. They did not give a reason why, but their license faces and their license plate had been recorded on the viral video, which has over 208,013 views on LiveLeak and had been shown on many local news stations. They were arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.
The fight began on the afternoon of June 12 when the victim of the beating, identified by the media as Jerry Patterson, unintentionally cut off the other vehicle. The other car followed him and blocked his car. Patterson told local KCAL-TV, "it just spiraled out of control, and I felt I didn't have any choice — either get beat up in my car or get out and fight."
In the fight, Patterson was pulled to the ground, knocked unconscious, and kicked six times in the head. The men in the other car drove away, and no one contacted the CHP.
CHP officer Ming Hsu told ABC News, "We had no reports, no victim, until this (video) surfaced. So without this video we more than likely wouldn't have heard about it."
The video recorder did not step in to prevent the beating, nor did he call the police afterwards, but he did get the plates and the faces of the now-arrested men on camera. Was he right to stay in his car and record, or should he have tried to stop the fight?