Videoed Road Rage Incident Leads to Fist Fight in Old Pasadena

A Tesla driver and a motorcyclist were filmed in a fist fight during a road rage incident in Old Pasadena on May 19.

Video captured by video blogger Charlie Salinas shows a verbal dispute escalating into a full-blown fight, leading to the two men wrestling on the sidewalk.

The altercation erupted on Fair Oaks Avenue and Holly Street, in front of Torta’s Mexico.

The video begins with the two motorists at a standstill. The Tesla driver is on the right-hand northbound lane of Fair Oaks Avenue as if he is preparing to turn right and the motorcyclist has cut off his path and is stopped just in front of him.

The biker puts down the stand of his motorcycle, gets off the bike, and heads toward the driver’s side of the Tesla, where he engages the driver through an open window.

Almost immediately the Tesla driver opens the door and the pair squared up to each other.

The motorcyclist’s comments are difficult to make out as he was still wearing a helmet, but the driver seems to say: “Come right here, b***h, I ain’t scared of s**t. You’re the one with your helmet on.”

At that point, the biker looked like he was walking back to his bike but stopped at the driver’s side door and started speaking to somebody inside the car, who the driver later said was his mother.

The driver then apparently pushed the motorcyclist forcefully and a physical confrontation erupted.

Within around 15 seconds the biker’s helmet fell to the ground and the two wrestled on the sidewalk for another minute or so before the woman and Salinas approach the pair and start telling them to quit fighting.

A police siren can be heard and a motors officer appears with his taser drawn and the two disengaged.

“You hit me first,” said the biker, as the driver went to put on his left shoe, which had fallen off in the tussle.

The officer ordered the pair to sit on the curb, at which point the motorcyclist said, “It’s on the Tesla camera,” presumably referring to a recording of the incident that led up to the fight.

“His wife saw,” said the biker.

“That’s not my wife, that’s my mom you harassed,” said the driver before the video ended.

Salinas said in a subsequent video he posted to social media that he emailed his footage to the Pasadena Police Department, as had been requested.

“It’s pretty scary,” he told KTLA News. “If anybody is out there driving, if they get confronted, I don’t think you should get out of the vehicle at all. It doesn’t matter if you’re wrong or right. Just call 911.”

The Pasadena Police Department has not released any information about the incident.

Pasadena Now has asked about the incident but not received information.