A juvenile girl was detained at the Porter County Juvenile Detention Center on Thursday on a delinquency charge of battery in connection with what Porter Police are calling a “road rage-type incident.”

Also arrested in connection with that incident was a Burns Harbor resident, police said.

According to police, at 8:25 p.m. officers were dispatched to a residence in the 200 block of Monroe Street in response to a report of a hit-and-run accident involving a female victim who was unresponsive and having seizures. On their arrival, police said, officers observed a woman lying in the street, bleeding from the head and vomiting but conscious. The woman’s husband advised police that the incident began as they were westbound on Broadway and then Wood Street and were being followed very closely by an erratically driven Chevrolet Cavalier.

At the stop signs, the husband further advised, the woman would yell out the window to the driver of the Cavalier to stop following so closely because they had their young children in the vehicle. Then, at the intersection of South Mineral Springs Road and Old Porter Road, the woman exited her vehicle to confront the driver of the Cavalier, a blonde girl. The girl likewise exited the Cavalier, the two of them exchanged words, and then they returned to their vehicles and drove to the 200 block of Monroe Street, the husband advised.

Once again, the woman and the girl exited their vehicles, the girl armed with a small baseball bat, with which she attempted to hit the woman, the husband advised. As the two were fighting, the girl’s male passenger, later identified as Aaron Robert Walters, 18, of 331 Old Porter Road, got behind the wheel of the Cavalier, backed the vehicle up, and in the process struck the woman with the Cavalier’s open passenger door, the husband advised. The girl and the male subject then left the scene but were subsequently located at Walters’ residence, police said.

The girl advised police that she tried to hit the woman with the baseball bat because the woman “was threatening her to fight”; that she was following the woman’s vehicle so closely to get information on it because it “did not have a license plate on it and they were going to call police”; that “she was driving behind them with her high beam lights because (the woman) was slamming on her brakes and driving erratically”; and that when the woman stopped at the intersection of South Mineral Springs Road and Old Porter Road she specifically issued the girl this invitation: “If you want a piece of me, follow me to my house.”

The girl also advised police that she had struck the woman with the baseball bat and that the Cavalier’s door never actually touched the woman.

The woman, for her part, denied being hit by the baseball bat and advised police that she managed to block the blow with her hands. The woman did say that she was struck by the Cavalier’s door and “that once she hit the ground, she did not remember anything further than that,” police said. The woman was transported to Porter Valparaiso Hospital Campus and treated for abrasions to the back of her head and her back, left hand, left elbow, and knees, police said.

Walters, on the other hand, advised police that he did not realize the Cavalier was in reverse when he hit the accelerator. He also stated that the car door hit the girl but did not hit the woman, police said.

Walters was transported to Porter County Jail on charges of criminal recklessness with a motor vehicle, leaving the scene of an accident with a serious bodily injury, and operating a vehicle without ever obtaining a driver’s license.

The girl, after being cleared medically at Porter hospital, was authorized detained at the JDC by a Juvenile Probation officer.

Posted 9/28/2009