A road rage driver who hammered on a woman’s windscreen and screamed at her has been warned he faces jail after being found guilty of threatening behaviour.
Peter Abbott, 60, unleashed a torrent of abuse at Samantha Isaacs, who was on her own, after she beeped her horn at him after being cut up outside a Tesco petrol station in Bournemouth in August last year.
Isaacs, who runs a television production company, locked her car doors and filmed the driver as he hit her car’s window with his fists and shouted: “Can you fucking see me, you fucking tart?”
In a video played at Poole magistrates court, Abbott could be seen putting his head against Isaacs’ car window and calling her a “slag” and a “whore” during the incident.
Another man intervened, telling Abbott: “What is wrong with you, it’s a woman on her own,” to which Abbott replied: “She’s a fucking bloody annoying woman.”
Magistrates found Abbott guilty of using threatening words or behaviour to cause alarm, distress or fear of violence, and said he could face jail time.
Isaacs, who is in her 50s, told the court: “I had just pulled out and a car came out of the shopping area and completely cut me up to the point where I had to slam on my brakes so hard all my belongings came off the passenger seat on to the floor.
“I beeped my horn as if to say ‘look out’ type of thing. He turned around in the car and started gesticulating, then he got out of the car and started shouting at me.”
Abbott attempted to justify his behaviour by claiming Isaacs had sounded her horn several times.
He said: “Rightly or wrongly, I am the type of person if someone behaves like that to me I will want to say something, I will call them out on it. I will do it with anyone, whatever gender, size or age they are.”
The district judge adjourned Abbott’s sentencing until a later date. Speaking after the trial, Isaacs said: “He’s a horrible man and a bully. I didn’t want it to go this far, I just don’t want him to do it to anyone else.”