A case of mistaken identity in a minor traffic accident led to gunfire and a man charged with attempted criminal homicide.
Jimmy Leon Lee, 57, faces two counts of attempted criminal homicide, four counts of aggravated assault and one count of felony reckless endangerment after police say he shot at a man and his daughter following a fender bender, according to police reports.
Just before 6 p.m. Friday, Eric Trimble, 30, was driving his white Nissan Altima on Shallowford Road with his 6-year-old daughter, Kayla, when he saw another white vehicle rear-end a black Cadillac Deville ahead of him.
Trimble said the white car sped off. He told police he drove around the Cadillac, whose driver, Lee, then began to follow him.
Lee “rammed” Trimble’s car four times and nearly pushed him into oncoming traffic, Trimble said in a telephone interview.
“I was just thinking, I need to get off of the streets,” he said.
Trimble pulled into C&B Package Store at 4251 Shallowford Drive. He got out of his car and tried to explain to Lee that he was not the driver who hit him earlier. He said he told Lee that his daughter was in the car.
“He was kind of incoherent when I was talking to him,” Trimble said. “(He) seemed like he didn’t understand.”
After a brief argument in which Lee repeated, “You started it, you started it,” Trimble said he got back into his car to leave.
That’s when Lee pulled off his glasses and pulled out a .22-caliber Browning Arms semiautomatic pistol, Trimble said.
As Trimble began to pull away, a witness said Lee fired and struck the Altima’s hubcap.
Trimble pulled to the other side of the parking lot, and a store clerk took his daughter inside and locked the door, he said.
Lee held the pistol and paced near his car, saying, “That’s right, wait for the police,” Trimble recalled.
According to the report, Lee told police that he “admitted to shooting the gun, claiming that he was trying to disable” Trimble’s car by “shooting the tires out.”
He said he “would have continued shooting if his gun had not jammed.”
Lee was being held at the Hamilton County Jail on a $290,000 bond on Monday. He is scheduled for an appearance in Hamilton County General Sessions Court on Oct. 25.