A Michigan Homeowner Says a Driver Nearly Hit Him While Crossing His Flooded Lawn, Then She Told Him He Was ‘About to Die’
"It had nothing to do with race."
A woman trying to dodge a flooded Dearborn, Michigan, street ended up cutting through several yards, including one belonging to a man who has Parkinson’s disease, sparking a confrontation caught on his Ring doorbell camera. According to New York Post, the homeowner watched from his yard on September 3 as the driver, identified only as Lacie, veered off the road and onto his neighbors’ lawns before rolling onto his own.
He banged on her window and yelled for her to turn back toward the street; she kept coming instead. “Telling her no and she kept coming. She almost hit me,” he told the outlet. Once she finally stopped and started to climb out, he shouted, “Get off my lawn, f*** you.” She rolled her window down and fired back, “You’re about to die,” and from there both kept swearing at one another.
He said his Parkinson’s diagnosis made the whole thing worse for him. “I have Parkinson’s disease,” he said. “When I get upset, I start shaking, hard to concentrate and communicating with people. I get agitated easily, and it’s all part of the disease, and her driving down the sidewalk like that did not help the situation.” He wanted a documented record of what happened in case he ever needed to file a claim, and said the only damage left behind was a set of tire ruts across his grass.
What Michigan Law Actually Says About This
Online commenters accused him of racial bias, something he flatly rejected. “It had nothing to do with race,” he said, adding that he holds no grudge against Lacie over the incident. For her part, Lacie insisted that her words weren’t meant as a threat at all. “I said that because he said much more than the ‘c-word,'” she said.
“We were yelling over each other and every time he stopped yelling, those words ‘you’re about to die’ came out. However, what I meant, you need to calm down, you’re about to die as in you’re old in your age.”
Whether her decision to drive onto his property counts as criminal trespass runs into a specific gap in Michigan law. MCL 750.552 typically requires that someone already be warned off a property, or refuse to leave once told to go, before criminal trespass applies. A driver making a snap decision during a flash flood, with no prior warning involved, likely wouldn’t satisfy that requirement.
Civil trespass works differently, though, since it doesn’t hinge on any advance notice at all, leaving the homeowner a possible avenue to pursue damages regardless of whether a criminal case ever materializes. The “about to die” line brings up a separate issue under MCL 750.81, Michigan’s assault statute. For a threat to count as assault there, it generally has to create fear of harm that’s immediate, not something distant or ambiguous.
Given that Lacie herself described the comment as a remark about his age rather than an actual threat, that explanation could weaken any case built solely around that one line, since both her intent and how immediate the danger seemed matter under the statute.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
Follow The Mary Sue:
