The crazed Tesla driver accused of jumping out of his car and smashing passing cars through a metal pipe in a wild road-rage spree in Southern California has been arrested, prosecutors have announced.
Nathaniel Radimak, 36, was taken into custody by members of the California Highway Patrol’s Southern Division Major Crimes Unit in Torrance Sunday afternoon.
He pleaded not guilty Tuesday to four counts, each of assault through force causing great bodily injury and criminal intimidation, and one felony count of vandalism, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon announced,
Radimak also faces two misdemeanor counts of vandalism and one misdemeanor count of gross misconduct.
“The victims in this case were horrified by what they experienced, but this reign of terror has ended today,” Gascon said in a statement. “Motorists in Los Angeles should not live in fear of assault while driving on a freeway.”
Prosecutors said that on January 11, Radimak used a pipe to attack someone’s car on the 2 freeway.
In a video made by the victim of the attack, a man in a green T-shirt, dark jeans and black mask, now identified as Radimak, pulls out his charcoal-colored 2022 Tesla Model X without a license plate K jumps. Brandishing a pipe, and starts banging the truck behind it.
After several shakes, the road-rage maniac gets back in his car and drives away.
“Initially you think, ‘Should I pin him to the wall with my car?’ ‘Shall I knock him down?’ ‘What should I do?'” The victim told KTLA station last month. “And I tried to stay focused and think, ‘I don’t want to go from victim to perpetrator in an instant.'”
Later that day, Radimak allegedly followed a couple through a shopping mall in Pasadena and nearly hit their car with his vehicle. Prosecutors said he also hit their vehicle with a metal pole.
On November 9, 2022, Radimak is accused of threatening to attack a woman at a storage facility in the village of Atwater.
The woman said that the suspect assaulted her without any provocation and then chased her, as can be seen in the video recorded at that time.
“You better go outside Cali, where you came from,” Radimak tells the woman as he drops her off after she gets back in his Tesla.
“You don’t even know where I’m from,” she shoots back. “I was born and raised in LA.”
Later that day, Radimak allegedly got out of his Tesla, threatened another woman on the freeway and broke one of her headlights.
The 36-year-old is also accused of threatening to assault a 74-year-old woman outside a doctor’s office in Glendale in June.
Radimak additionally has a pending case where he is suspected of assaulting another driver in a road rage incident that occurred in January 2020 in Hollywood.
The DA’s office said when his car was searched in connection with that case, Radimak allegedly had steroids and more than $30,000 in cash. He was charged with one felony count of possession for the sale of a controlled substance and one misdemeanor count of battery.
Gascon’s office this week asked a judge to detain Radimac, who was described as “a flight risk and a danger to the community based on his long criminal history, which spans nearly two decades and spans multiple states and jurisdictions.” crosses.”
Granting prosecutors’ request to jail Radimac, the presiding judge noted that since 2004, the defendant has violated the law in eight different states, ABC 7 reported.
Radimak is being held on $5.1 million bail. He is due back in court for a preliminary hearing on February 14.
