{"id":88383,"date":"2025-12-18T20:21:02","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T20:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/88383\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T20:21:02","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T20:21:02","slug":"armed-road-rage-incident-lands-lakeland-optician-behind-bars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/88383\/","title":{"rendered":"Armed road rage incident lands Lakeland optician behind bars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Grady <\/p>\n

LAKELAND, Fla. – A Lakeland<\/a> optician is accused of pulling a gun on another vehicle that had a 3-year-old child inside during a road rage incident on Sunday, according to the Polk County<\/a> Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

The backstory:<\/p>\n

Detectives arrived at Mary Holland Park, located at 2015 Shumate Drive, Bartow, shortly before 11:40 a.m. on Sunday, in response to a reported road rage incident.<\/p>\n

According to PCSO, \u00a0the victims, which included a 3-year-old child, were traveling southbound on Harden Boulevard near Pipkin Road when they encountered Stephen Phillips driving a Hyundai Santa Fe. \u00a0The victims told detectives that Phillips was driving erratically and performed a “brake check” on their vehicle.<\/p>\n

After passing Phillips\u2019 vehicle, deputies say both cars came to a stop side by side at a traffic light. That\u2019s when, according to PCSO, Phillips pulled out a silver semi-automatic firearm and pointed it towards the victims with his finger resting on the trigger.<\/p>\n

READ: Grady Judd: Suspect accused of brutally stabbing retired nurse to death in Davenport arrested<\/a><\/p>\n

According to the victims, they feared for their lives because Phillips made repeated racial slurs.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Initially, deputies said Phillips denied showing the gun, but later admitted to pulling it, claiming that he did not believe he pointed it at the victims.<\/p>\n

However, the victims gave detectives a photo of the encounter, which showed Phillips holding up a .22 caliber Phoenix Arms HP firearm.<\/p>\n

What they’re saying:<\/p>\n

“Brandishing a firearm at innocent people\u2014especially a child\u2014is unacceptable,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd<\/a> explained. “Road rage that escalates into violence will not be tolerated, and my detectives acted quickly to put this man behind bars.”<\/p>\n

“You can see this clearly with or without glasses,” Judd added. “This optician should have known this was going to be crystal clear to us.”<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Phillips was arrested and charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and improper exhibition of a firearm.<\/p>\n

The Source: Information for this story was provided by Polk County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

Polk County<\/a>Crime and Public Safety<\/a>Grady Judd<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAKELAND, Fla. – A Lakeland optician is accused of pulling a gun on another vehicle that had a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[630,47,115,992,7153,34073,135,137,136,628],"class_list":["post-88383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-crime-publicsafety","tag-fl","tag-news","tag-people","tag-polk","tag-sheriff-grady-judd","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88383","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=88383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}