A Florida man allegedly drove an SUV onto railroad tracks in Mississippi, forcing an approaching freight train to stop before leaving the vehicle and trying to take a passing motorist’s car.<\/p>\n
The confrontation ended differently than he may have expected: the motorist was armed.<\/p>\n
The Rankin County Sheriff’s Office<\/a> identified the man as 22-year-old Ronnie Percy Holmes of Florida. He was taken into custody Saturday morning in the Star community on charges of attempted carjacking and obstructing a railway.<\/p>\n Holmes was later taken to the University of Mississippi Medical Center for an evaluation before being booked into the Rankin County Jail.<\/p>\n Wrong Way<\/p>\n Embedded media follows; please allow a moment to load.<\/p>\n The incident began around 9:30 a.m. Oct. 3, when dispatchers began receiving 911 calls about a red Chevrolet SUV with a Florida license plate traveling southbound in the northbound lanes of U.S. Highway 49.<\/p>\n Additional callers reported that the SUV turned onto Dixie Road before the driver took it onto railroad tracks near the Airgas facility, where it came to a stop and blocked the line.<\/p>\n Dispatchers contacted the railroad in an effort to stop any approaching trains and learned that a freight train was already headed toward the location.<\/p>\n The train stopped about 200 yards from the SUV.<\/p>\n Another Vehicle<\/p>\n After leaving the SUV on the tracks, Holmes allegedly walked back toward Dixie Road and approached a passing motorist, where the sheriff’s office said he attempted to enter the vehicle and take it from the driver.<\/p>\n The motorist, a Rankin County resident who owns and operates a firearms store and training facility in Flowood, feared for his safety and drew a firearm.<\/p>\n He held Holmes at gunpoint until deputies arrived and took Holmes into custody without further incident.<\/p>\n Because of what the sheriff’s office described as the intentional obstruction of a railway, the Mississippi Office of Homeland Security and the FBI’s Jackson office were notified.<\/p>\n Sheriff Bryan Bailey credited the dispatchers with recognizing the danger and getting the approaching train stopped, while also praising the responding deputies and the motorist who detained Holmes.<\/p>\n Holmes is expected to appear before Rankin County Court Judge David Morrow on charges of attempted carjacking and obstructing a railway.<\/p>\n If you want more stories like this, follow Guessing Headlights<\/a> on <\/a>Yahoo<\/a> so you don’t miss what’s coming next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Florida man allegedly drove an SUV onto railroad tracks in Mississippi, forcing an approaching freight train to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-418451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}