September 06, 2019
American lawyer with murder for intentionally running down an elderly Iranian-American in a case of road rage.
The accused man, Bryan Schmitt, 47, said he accidentally ran into Hamid Jahangard, 60, in Sandy Springs, Georgia, a suburb north of Atlanta.
But investigators said a commercial truck behind Schmitt’s Mercedes had a security camera—and the camera showed a completely different story from that given by Schmitt.
Three weeks after Jahangard was hit July 30, prosecutors filed charges of murder and aggravated assault against Schmitt. They said Schmitt lost his temper in a case of road rage and ran down Jahangard in “an intentional act.”
Jahangard moved to the United States after the revolution with very little money and eventually became a very successful and wealthy real estate investor. Jahangard and his wife had two daughters, now in their early 20s. His wife died 11 months ago.
The road rage incident centered around a golf ball.
“The fatal encounter stemmed from Jahangard accidentally striking Schmitt’s Mercedes vehicle with a golf ball,” the prosecutor’s office told NBC News. A subsequent inspection of the car uncovered no damage.
The dispute took place at the bottom of a driveway.
According to the police report filed in court, Schmitt told detectives, “I rolled down my [window] to ask why he’d throw something at my car. He yelled at me to ‘F**K! It’s none of your business!’”
Schmitt continued, “When I attempted to pull into the driveway he pushed a trash can at me. I swerved to right to miss it and ended up hitting a second trash can. When I came to stop, he was lying on the other side of the first trash can.”
A witness who arrived on the scene and called 9-1-1 said he saw Schmitt tending to Jahangard on the road as blood poured from his head.
The Iranian was rushed to a hospital, but died three days later.
Jahangard’s brother, Manu, said he was talking on the phone with his brother at the time of the incident, and indeed heard him getting into an argument with a man.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Manu “heard someone yelling and he heard his brother say, ‘I did not throw anything, get out my face, get out my face’,” before the line went dead.
The police could not find Jahangard’s cellphone at the scene. A Find-My-Phone tracking device led police to Schmitt’s house, where they found the cellphone under a windshield wiper of the Mercedes.
That was one piece of evidence that prompted investigators to suspect Schmitt had driven into Jahangard at a high speed.
Jahangard also sustained a massive skull fracture that was inconsistent with Schmitt’s account that he swerved to miss the trash can.
On August 8, investigators uncovered video footage recorded by an air conditioning service van that was traveling behind Schmitt’s Mercedes.
Investigator J.T. Williams wrote in his report that the footage shows “Schmitt’s vehicle plowing into the driveway and is not the type of driving for someone to ‘turn around’ [or] ‘swerve to miss a garbage can’.”
Schmitt did not flee the scene, but stayed until police arrived. They had no cause to disbelieve what he said and let him go after questioning him. It was only later as they investigated and found holes in Schmitt’s story that they probed further until they found the video from the truck camera.