North Texas Teen Beaten Unconscious After Suspicious Fender Bender
MIDLOTHIAN, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) - A North Texas teenager is recovering from a brutal beating that left him bloodied and unconscious, lying on the shoulder of Highway 287 in Midlothian.
The beating Tuesday evening followed a minor fender bender with another driver. The crash came minutes after the teen got cash from a Chase bank ATM.
Police don't believe the crash was a coincidence.
"I thought 'it was his fault, so I would assume he would have walked over and been like, 'I'm sorry'," says 16-year-old Alex Ander. "He walked up cursing and screaming at me. I'm scared ya know. It's Texas. It's an open carry state. You don't know who's carrying and what could happen if somebody's mad."
Alex says he'd noticed the man in the small, dark blue or green SUV driving aggressively, riding his bumper before changing lanes and deliberately swerving into his yellow Ford Mustang.
He says he pulled over onto the shoulder and the situation quickly escalated.
"Right after I said I was gonna call the police, he opened my drivers side door, pulled me out of the car, and I remember being thrown onto the ground and that was it."
The teen says he doesn't remember the beating or the call that police made to his mother, a trauma nurse and unit supervisor at an area hospital.
"I see injuries like this all the time at work, but when it's your own child, it's so different," says his mother Amber Parrilla," her voice breaking.
She admits to feeling more than fear. "I was so livid! I was angry!" she says. "Here's a little boy on the side of the road getting beat up... and no one stopped to help my child. That broke my heart." And her eyes fill with tears.
Parrilla says at least five drivers called 911 to summon police, but no one stopped to help. "If someone's getting beaten up, stop. Honk your horn. Throw something. Do something!"
The family hopes someone driving through the area at about 5:45 Tuesday evening saw something that could help lead police to whomever is responsible.
"I want someone to speak up," says Parrilla. "Someone saw something. There was way too much traffic for someone not to have seen something."
Alex doesn't remember much about the beating he took that left him with stitches in his knee, a bruised face and bloodshot eye, but he says he cannot forget the face of his attacker.
He described a heavy-set man in his mid 40s, with a "belly," wearing dark jeans and a jacket. He described his hair as short and "spiky," and he had a thin mustache. Alex says the man spoke with a thick Spanish accent.
The teenager wants him located and arrested for what he did to him and for what he could also do to others in a small community not expecting it.
"It seems like the type of town you don't have to watch your back all the time," says Alex, who just moved to North Texas from Florida last week. "Seems like for the most part there's nice people... [but], there's always the bad apple."
