Posted on 08/16/2006 5:54:06 AM PDT by rawhide
Police arrested a University of Georgia student Tuesday for allegedly running down two women in the parking lot of a local McDonald's after they argued over who was next in line.
Ruth Catherine Driscoll-Dunn, 24, was taken into custody at her apartment a half-mile from the fast-food restaurant on Gaines School Road and charged with two counts of aggravated assault.
Police said Driscoll-Dunn argued Saturday morning with two women over who was first in line when a new cashier opened up, and that Driscoll-Dunn waited for the women in her Jeep Cherokee in the parking lot and veered into them as she drove past.
The women, a 51-year-old Athens resident and her daughter, were knocked down, but not injured, according to police.
An investigator questioned Driscoll-Dunn at police headquarters on Monday, police said, and an Athens-Clarke County Magistrate Court judge signed arrest warrants Tuesday morning.
"She was cooperative, but I really don't want to get into what she said," said Athens-Clarke police Lt. Mike McKeel.
Police said Driscoll-Dunn became a suspect after investigators got a partial tag number from her Jeep and reviewed a surveillance video from inside the restaurant.
A detective went to Driscoll-Dunn's basement apartment at a house on Springtree Road at about 12:30 p.m.
As the investigator spoke to her in the driveway, Driscoll-Dunn gestured with her hands and talked for several minutes before a uniformed officer came to take her away in handcuffs.
Driscoll-Dunn was booked into the Clarke County Jail, where she was being held pending a bond hearing this morning.
A man at Driscoll-Dunn's apartment Tuesday, who said his name is Coby Brazzelle, said his friend knew she might be arrested because of the publicity the case received.
Brazzelle said the UGA student told him she didn't start the argument at McDonald's, and that one of the other women grabbed onto her Jeep as it drove away.
"Somehow the woman's cell phone broke, I think when it hit the side mirror, and they want to charge her with aggravated assault to make her pay for the phone," Brazzelle said.
But witnesses at McDonald's verified the two victims' story, according to McKeel, supervisor of the robbery/homicide squad.
That version has Driscoll-Dunn threatening to kill the other two women after accusing them of cutting in when a cashier opened a new line for the breakfast crowd. The suspect waited in her Jeep for the women to leave the restaurant and swerved into them as they walked in the parking lot, striking them with the Jeep's passenger side, police said.
Brazzelle said he lives on the other side of the county from Driscoll-Dunn's southeastern Clarke County neighborhood, but would stay at his friend's apartment to care for pets.
He said Driscoll-Dunn had stopped at McDonald's Saturday morning to pick up breakfast before going shopping for school books. She didn't report the incident to police because "she didn't think it was anything significant," Brazzelle said.
A UGA spokeswoman verified Driscoll-Dunn was registered for fall semester, but said the student placed restrictions on her records to keep private personal information, such as her major.
"This is taking me by shock," Brazzelle said. "This isn't like Ruth. She's real easygoing."
Very beautiful? Sheesh, she looks like Boy George.
Translation: "What she DID say told me that she's a coo-coo nutjob."
(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo!)
Guilty!
I'm with you! I think I've been conned!!!!!
Your idea of very beautiful must be differnt from mine.
GA ping
Very beautiful? I sure hope that you were being facetious...
I doubt it. I don't think her Jeep would have survived.
This'll be a hate crime before it's over.
Burger Rage?..........
Nah, she's far more masculine looking than Boy George.
We are talking about Georgia, after all......
That's MY kind of burger!
Gollllleeee, I'd hit it!
There isn't a toilet made that wouldn't clog on that burger.
Looks like your basic Freeper to me.
Spot on observation
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