Altercation erupts between Amazon drivers and VFW commander on NC gravel road, cops say
An altercation erupted this week between two Amazon drivers and the commander of a North Carolina Veterans of Foreign Wars post who told them to slow down on his private gravel road, police said.
Lee Martin, commander of VFW Post 4059 in Mint Hill near Charlotte, told The Charlotte Observer he suffered head wounds, bruised ribs and a broken bone in his leg when he was pepper-sprayed, knocked to the ground and beaten on Sunday.
How the dust-up between the three men began — and who’s at fault — remains unclear, Mint Hill police told the Observer.
“This is a terrible incident and we’re actively investigating,” Amazon said In a statement Thursday night.
Martin is a 63-year-old Army National Guard veteran who earned a Combat Action Badge and other military honors for his service in the Iraq War in 2005 and 2006. He is on full disability for traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, he told the Observer at his home on Wednesday.
He said he intervened after hearing his 80-year-old neighbor, Eddie Bartlett, yell to one of the Amazon drivers to slow down on their narrow, 10-mph road. Five homes and several “Slow” signs line the road about 1 1/2 miles from Exit 43 (Mint Hill) on Interstate 485.
“The guy in the first vehicle came flying up the road,” Martin told the Observer. The driver was in his personal car but wore an Amazon shirt, he said.
“My neighbor yelled at him, ‘Hey, guys, this is not a race track,” Martin said. “’It’s a private drive out here and need y’all to slow down because there’s kids out here.”
“Then the next guy came in the van and (the neighbor) said the same thing to him, ‘Hey, this is not a race track out here, Slow down,’” Martin said. The van had the Amazon logo on it, he said.
“That’s when I yelled, ‘Hey guys, you don’t have to be like that,’” Martin said. “All you have to do is slow down.”
Martin said he was beside the Amazon driver’s car and holding a rake he was using on his lawn.
“That’s when he (the first Amazon driver) sprayed me in the eyes with pepper spray, and I slung the rake out of natural instinct for being in (the) service, but he kept spraying me, kept spraying me. And all I could do, because my eyes were blinded, that’s when I felt the car door was slammed in my knee cap, bringing me down to the ground.”
‘I’d have been a dead person’
Another neighbor happened to drive up the road at that point, Martin said.
“If my neighbor hadn’t come in and pulled in behind him, I’d have been a dead person right there,” he said.
“My ribs are badly bruised, and my knee’s messed up and going to require surgery,” said Martin, adding that he was beaten while on the ground.
The Amazon drivers gave a different version to police, Mint Hill Police Capt. John Rowell told the Observer on Wednesday, citing an internal police report.
“(Martin) actually initiated the contact and had a rake in his hand and did damage to both vehicles with the rake,” according to the report, Rowell said. “According to the report, he accosted both drivers initially.”
According to Rowell, the internal report said Martin was taken to the hospital “for evaluation,” but the report doesn’t indicate any injuries.
The drivers weren’t hurt, but their vehicles sustained “pretty significant damage to the driver’s side from the prongs,” according to the police captain.
The public police report of the incident said each vehicle sustained $500 damage.
Both drivers and Martin were at the scene when police arrived, Rowell said.
No third-party witness
Only a one-sentence explanation is given on the public police report in the field titled How Attacked or Committed: “By going out with a rake and hitting a vehicle and the victim coming out and pepper spraying the suspect.”
Rowell said because no third-party witness was present when officers arrived, police regard the incident as a “he-said, she-said” altercation.
Either side would have to seek charges before a magistrate, he said.
Bartlett, the neighbor, told the Observer he wasn’t present for what happened after he told the first driver to slow down and the driver hurled a vulgarity at him.
Attempts by the Observer to reach the Amazon drivers were unsuccessful. Cellphone numbers listed in public records for one driver ring to other people. A number for the other driver has a rapid busy signal.
The drivers are a 24-year-old Charlotte man and a 29-year-old Gastonia man, according to the public police report.
Veteran to seek charge
Rowell, the police captain, said the Amazon drivers didn’t know each other. “It was sheer coincidence” that they were delivering packages at the same time on the same road, he said.
He also said the case doesn’t rise to the level of felony charges, only misdemeanors.
Martin said he intends to go to the magistrate as soon as possible. Right now, he’s still getting treatment for his injuries, he said, and has an appointment on Friday with a Charlotte orthopedic doctor who specializes in fractures.
This story was originally published May 21, 2021 at 6:30 AM with the headline "Altercation erupts between Amazon drivers and VFW commander on NC gravel road, cops say."