Fathers Shoot Each Other's Kids in Road Rage Incident

"There could have been two dead kids because of two stupid grown men," Bill Leeper, sheriff of Florida's Nassau County, said Monday, revealing two girls were each shot by the other's father during a road rage incident. William Hale, 35, of Douglas, Ga., and Frank Allison, 43, of Callahan, Fla., are each charged with attempted second-degree murder. Leeper said Hale, in a Dodge Ram, and Allison, in a Nissan Murano, were "both acting like idiots"—"speeding and driving recklessly … brake checking and trying to cut each other off"—as they headed northbound on US Route 1 near Jacksonville on Saturday, per Newsweek. "They obviously didn't like the way the other one was driving."

At one point, Hale pulled up beside Allison. A passenger in the Nissan directed a middle finger at the Ram and someone in the Ram threw a water bottle through the Nissan’s open window. That's when Allison allegedly fired a gunshot at the Ram, striking Hale's 5-year-old daughter in the leg. Hale returned fire, unloading seven or eight shots, according to an arrest report. Three bullets struck the Nissan and one struck the back of a 14-year-old girl, who suffered a collapsed lung, Leeper said, per WJAX. As the drivers passed a sheriff deputy's patrol car, they pulled over and got out but "argued face-to-face until a deputy broke up the scuffle," per HuffPost.

In a 911 call, a mother of one of the shooting victims pleads for an ambulance, saying there's an officer on scene "but they're all fighting and my daughter's been shot and nobody cares," per NBC News. "I don't want to die," a child is heard saying in a call, per WJXT. The children were eventually taken to a hospital and both are expected to survive. "I thought of the movie Dumb and Dumber," Leeper told Newsweek. "How stupid could two people be to endanger their children, not only by driving recklessly, but by shooting a gun at another vehicle while engaged in a road rage incident is just insane." "Thankfully, no one was killed," he added. "But it could have very easily turned out that way." The men have since posted bail. (More road rage stories.)