'I Could Feel The Blows & There Was Nothing I Could Do': Road Rage Victim On Baseball Bat Beating
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LAUDERDALE LAKES (CBSMiami) -- A South Florida woman says she suffered a broken nose and had to get seven stitches and seven staples in her head after two women beat her with baseball bats in what she said was a road rage attack which was caught on cell phone video.
Mikaela Barboza said she cut off another driver on Thursday on 441 in Lauderdale Lakes around 7 in the evening.
The other driver immediately started yelling at her, along with another woman who was her sister.
Barboza says she pulled into a nearby parking lot because she was worried for her safety. She called 911 when the women followed her and blocked in her car.
She says she started recording on her cellphone as the women approached.
"I hope you know the police are on the way. The police are on the way. I don't got time for this. I got a kid, bruh," Barboza said as the camera swings up showing a woman in a floral dress grabbing a bat from her trunk. "Go head, hit me with a bat," she said in the video.
"I got a kid too," the woman said, now walking toward Barboza with a wooden baseball bat.
A small boy can be seen in the front seat of the woman's car, watching the scene. "I don't give a f---."
The angry woman starts cursing at Barboza, threatening to "f--- her a-- up."
Another woman appears, also holding a bat.
"I'm not scared," Barboza said, then the camera goes flying as the beating began.
"She started hitting me and at that point I thought that was it for me," she explained to CBS4's Ted Scouten. "I could feel the blows and there was nothing I could do."
Now she has a gash on her forehead, staples in her head, a broken nose and plenty of bruises.
"When I saw the bat, I was honestly in fear of my life, I was just didn't know how it was going to end and when I saw the sister coming with the second bat, at that time I was fighting for my life. I had no other options. I was just so scared. I had no idea what was going to happen."
A bystander also captured video and it shows the two women struggling on the ground as other witnesses try to break up the fight.
"You guys need to chill out, man, you guys need to chill out man," the witness is heard saying.
"Let me go," yells one of the women with a bat. "Not with the bat," said a witness breaking up the fight. "Let me go," she yelled again. The witness said again, "Don't hit 'em with no bat." She finally said, "I'm gonna put it in the car."
Barboza thinks that saved her life.
"If it wasn't for them, I probably wouldn't be here or I might have been brain dead because if it was just us, and nobody around, they would have kept beating me until, who knows," she said.
The women left before BSO deputies arrived.
As a mother, Barboza said she was shocked when she realized that one of the women, who she accuses of attacking her, had a child in the car about the same age as her own daughter.
"The first attacker, when she got out of the car with bat, her child was in the front seat, no buckles, watching the whole scene. His window was down and everything. He saw the whole thing. He was crying when we were fighting," she recalled.
In hindsight, Barboza says she should have stayed in the car until police arrived.
Barboza says wants to see her attackers locked up.
"My kid could have been without a mother, you know what I mean or I could have been a vegetable. I've heard scary stories about people being beat with bats. I want justice to be served, I want them to pay for what they did."
BSO is searching for the women.