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The crazed Tesla driver accused of jumping out of his car and smashing passing cars with a metal pipe in a wild road-rage spree in Southern California has been arrested, prosecutors have announced.
Nathaniel Radimak, 36, was taken into custody Sunday afternoon in Torrance by members of the California Highway Patrol’s Southern division Major Crimes Unit.
He pleaded not guilty Tuesday to four counts each of assault by means of force to produce great bodily injury and criminal threats, and one felony count of vandalism, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced.
Radimak also faces two misdemeanor counts of vandalism and one misdemeanor count of elder abuse.
“The victims in this case were reasonably terrified by what they experienced, but this reign of terror ends today,” Gascón said in a statement. “Motorists in Los Angeles shouldn’t have to live in fear of being attacked while simply driving on the freeway.”
Prosecutors said that on Jan. 11, Radimak used a pipe to strike someone’s car on the 2 Freeway.
In a video made by the victim of the attack, a man in a green T-shirt, dark jeans and a black mask, who has been identified as Radimak, jumps out of his charcoal-colored 2022 Tesla Model X with no license plates while brandishing a pipe, and begins pummeling the truck behind him.
After several whacks, the road-rage maniac gets back in his car and drives away.
“Initially you think, ‘Should I pin him to the wall with my car?’ ‘Should I run him down?’ ‘What should I do?’” the victim told the station KTLA last month. “And I tried to stay focused and think, ‘I don’t want to go from victim to criminal in an instant.’”
Later that day, Radimak allegedly followed a couple from a shopping mall in Pasadena and nearly hit their car with his vehicle. Prosecutors said he also struck their vehicle with a metal pole.
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On November 9, 2022, Radimak is accused of threatening to attack a woman at a storage facility in Atwater Village.
The woman said the suspect harassed her without any provocation, and then followed her, as seen in a video she recorded at the time.
“You better go outside Cali where you came from,” Radimak tells the woman as he gets back in his Tesla after hurling expletives at her.
“You don’t even know where I’m from,” she shoots back. “I’m born and raised in LA.”
Later that day, Radimak allegedly got out of his Tesla and threatened another woman on a freeway and broke one of her headlights.
The 36-year-old also is accused of threatening to assault a 74-year-old woman outside a doctor’s office in Glendale in June.
Radimak additionally has a pending case in which he is suspected of attacking another driver in a road-rage incident that took place in Hollywood back in January 2020.
When his car was searched in connection with that case, Radimak allegedly had steroids and more than $30,000 in cash, the DA’s office stated. He was charged with one felony count of possession for sale of a controlled substance and one misdemeanor count of battery.
Gascón’s office asked a judge this week to lock up Radimak, who was described as a flight risk and a danger to the community based on “his lengthy criminal history which spans nearly two decades and crosses multiple states and jurisdictions.”
In granting the prosecutors’ request to jail Radimak pending the outcome of his case, the presiding judge said that since 2004, the defendant has had run-ins with the law in eight different states, reported ABC7.
Radimak is being held on bail topping $5.1 million. He is due back in court for a preliminary hearing on Feb. 14.
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