DALLAS — Police have arrested a man who they say assaulted a pregnant woman during an alleged road rage incident.
Fareed Hashim, 35, was arrested on a charge of aggravated assault with serious bodily injury.
He's accused of repeatedly punching Niesha Woods, leaving her with facial fractures and a broken jaw.
Woods claims she was backing out of a complex near Arapaho Road and the North Dallas Tollway when Hashim threw something at her car and spat in her face.
Hashim, who was on a motorcycle, told police Woods almost hit him with her car.
“He’s yelling all in my face," Woods said. "I push him out of my face, and I go to turn, and that’s when he like hit me, and I felt my jaw pop.”
Officers from the Addison Police Department initially responded to the scene, but the Dallas Police Department took over the case.
Woods and her attorney, Justin Moore, claim Dallas police initially treated the injured pregnant woman as a suspect.
They say police issued Woods a citation for simple assault while she was in the hospital, and allowed Hashim to walk free.
”He said that I provoked the situation because I got out of my car, and I shouldn’t have got out of my car," Woods said as she cried.
A spokesperson from the Dallas Police Department issued a statement earlier in the week that said officers wrote Woods’ citation based on accounts from multiple witnesses.
After a press conference on Monday, Woods and Moore went to Dallas police headquarters to file formal complaints against Hashim and the officers who arrived on the scene.
"From the incident up to now, nobody actually believed Niesha," Moore said.
”We want assurances from our law enforcement agencies that the women in this city are safe,” Moore said. “What we have right now, we don’t have those assurances.”
The Dallas Police Department issued the following statement late Thursday afternoon:
The initial patrol officers did a preliminary investigation at the scene. The officers cited probable cause and issued a class C misdemeanor citation for assault to Ms. Niesha Woods. After further review by detectives and based on the totality of the circumstances, an arrest warrant for the motorcyclist, Fareed Hashim, was obtained. He has been charged with penal code violation 22.02(A)(1) aggravated assault serious bodily injury. The investigation is on-going.
Hashim was arrested on Thursday morning. A magistrate set his bond at $5,000.
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