Fairchild Charged with Aggravated Assault after Alleged 'Road Rage' Incident

On Tuesday, East Ridge Police arrested a man after an alleged “road rage” incident.

Richard Cameron Fairchild, 25, of a Sylvan Avenue address, was charged with one count of Aggravated Assault. He was jailed on a $5,000 bond and is due in East Ridge Municipal Court on March 10.

According to an affidavit of complaint, police were dispatched to the 900 block of Spring Creek Road regarding a disorder with a weapon. The caller said that while he was driving he was “cut off” by a gray sedan that continued to “brake check” him, and that one of the occupants in the car had pointed a gun at him.

According to the report, the incident continued into the Chattanooga city limits where Chattanooga police intercepted the suspect vehicle and conducted a traffic stop in the 2200 block of McCallie Avenue.

The report states that Fairchild, the driver of the car, told CPD officers that he had a gun in the glove compartment. At this point, Fairchild and the other occupants of the vehicle were detained.

East Ridge police spoke with the victim who said that he was cut off by Fairchild on the interstate and brake checked him. The victim said he yelled out his window to Fairchild that his children were with him. When the victim exited onto Ringgold Road, he claimed that a pistol with a laser sight was pointed at him by the driver of the sedan, putting him in fear for his safety.

Police checked the gun in Fairchild’s car. It was a Taurus G3 and had a laser sight on it.

Fairchild told police that he never took the weapon out of the glove compartment, the report states. He said that the victim was responsible for initiating the disorder.

The firearm was seized and placed into property and evidence.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.