(WXYZ) — “My baby in that car,” a mother’s heart-wrenching plea for mercy falls on deaf ears as a woman on a tirade smashes into not one but two cars at a Belleville gas station, with a 7-month old infant in the backseat.
Surveillance video shows the car stop and the woman is finally able to get her child out of the car and into her arms for safety, but the attack isn’t over.
A woman who police have now identified as 26-year-old Ariyah Bennet grabs a bat out of the trunk of her car and smashes a car's driver-side windshield.
The chaotic scene unfolds at a Shell gas station on Belleville Road and I-94. But what led up to the attack?
Van Buren police confirm the two women from neighboring towns were meeting up for a children’s clothes exchange. The woman in the Black SUV confronts Bennet and allegedly calls her a 'burnt piece of toast' and the two got into a physical fight, but it wasn’t long before fists weren’t enough.
“I went over and I was like OMG what’s going on?” says Kim Lulow who was just trying to get gas when she heard tires screeching and a crash, then realized it was her burgandy van being smacked into.
"How someone can do that with a baby in their car. I just can not believe," says Lulow.
Bennet allegedly hit Lulow's car with a bat too, but Lulow says she is thankful no one was seriously hurt and the irate woman reached for a bat and not a gun.
“Well, the way they are with guns nowadays. I mean you just don’t know,” says Lulow.
Van Buren police quickly arrived on scene and Bennet was arrested and faces a slew of charges and fines including two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. The other woman involved in the altercation has not been charged but police confirm the 7-month-old child was not injured during the crashes.
In total Bennet faces six charges including three felonies and up to 14 years behind bars.
