Man arrested in Newton Co road rage case

Video shows the moments a man pulled out a gun on a group of Newton County teenagers after authorities said he was triggered by road rage.

Investigators told Channel 2's Matt Johnson that a 56-year-old man thought he had been rear-ended by an 18-year-old, and he got upset.

But what happened next landed him in jail and made a group of teens scared for their lives.

One of the teens who was held at gunpoint shared the video he recorded of the incident with Johnson.

“Can you tell him to put the gun down, please?” one of the 18-year-olds can be heard saying on the video. He is talking to another witness as the man held him and his friends at gunpoint.

Deputies said the teens crashed their car while trying to get away from the man.

“I looked back and I could see he's following me,” Za'reon Greer said.

Greer recorded the Nov. 10 incident on his phone while he was speaking with his mother.

“He's got a gun, Ma!” Greer can be heard saying on the video.

He said the man ordered him onto a curb after he wrecked the car while the man was on his tail.

“I just was going along with what he said to do because I didn’t want to lose my life,” Greer said.

Greer said it all started after the man felt that Greer got too close to his car at a stoplight on Salem Road in Covington.

“It looked like he had a gun, so I definitely wanted to avoid the situation,” Greer said.

He told Johnson that the man then followed him as he drove south toward Oak Hill Road and eventually crashed into a tree in front of a subdivision.

“I look out to look at my damages and I looked back and there he is behind me with a gun, pointed at our face,” Greer said.

Stacy Greer, Za'reon’s mother, said she got a frantic phone call around 1:30 p.m.

“I’m thinking, 'This guy is going to kill my son,'” Stacy Greer said.

She's told Johnson that she’s thankful a deputy responded to a 911 call for the crash, interviewed everyone involved and arrested 56-year-old Patrick Garrett.

“He tried to take the law into his own hands,” Stacy Greer said.

Garrett faces misdemeanor charges and has bonded out of jail.

“If he did it to him, he could do it to somebody else, and next time he'll pull the trigger,” Stacy Greer said.

The Greers have  started a GoFundMe page to help raise money for a new car.