Houston Road Rage Brawl

About

Houston Road Rage Brawl refers to a video of several drivers physically assaulting each other during a hit-and-run road rage incident in Houston, Texas. Upon being uploaded to YouTube in May 2016, the video went viral on the social media and prompted the launch of a police investigation in search of the parties involved in the fight.

Origin

On May 14th, 2016, YouTuber Ravion Moyers uploaded a video titled “Houston – RoadRage 5/14/16,” in which a group of men and a woman engage in a fist fight after a fender-bender accident in the middle of Highway 6 near US 290 in Houston, Texas. During the altercation, the woman attempts to break up the fight and gets struck by one of the men, leading her to yell loudly in defense. Within 72 hours, the video gathered upwards of 525,000 views and 590 comments.

Spread

That day, Twitter users @Jabalibarrett^[2] and @MrPoonSoaker^[3] posted short clips of the incident. Within 72 hours, the videos gained over 7,500 and 11,500 retweets respectively. The same day, Twitter user @IStayNguyening^[4]posted a photoshopped still image of the woman in the video edited to look like the character Raiden from the Mortal Kombat video game series (shown below).

Meanwhile, the video was subsequently posted on the /r/houston,^[5] /r/Roadcam^[7] and /r/pussypassdenied^[8] subreddits. On May 15th, the Houston, Texas local news station ABC 13^[6] published an interview with the man driving the white car in the video, who claimed the incident escalated after the driver in the blue truck nearly collided with his car and proceeded to curse at him. The same day, Twitter user @xasanchez94 posted a photoshopped picture of Birdman from his viral "Put Some Respeck on My Name" interview with the woman from the road rage video superimposed over his face (shown below, left). On May 16th, Redditor MW2Man00 posted a still image of the woman yelling in the video with the caption "When you watching porn and you feel yourself about to nut to the wrong part of the video" to /r/blackpeopletwitter,^[10] where it garnered more than 6,000 votes (89% upvoted) and 200 comments in 24 hours (shown below, right).

That same day, Redditor Captain_Hampockets submitted a post to /r/OutOfTheLoop asking about the origin of the still image used in the /r/blackpeopletwitter image macro.^[1] Meanwhile, The Daily Dot^[9] published an article about the incident titled "This Vicious Road Rage Brawl is Houston at Its Finest."

Police Investigation

On May 16th, after the video went viral online, Harris County Sheriff's Office launched a police investigation into the incident, using the footage to try to identify all four individuals that were involved in the daylight brawl. While no one was seriously injured, the driver and passenger of the black truck that drove away from the scene of the accident could face a charge of failure to stop and give information, according to the Sheriff's Office.^[11]

Search Interest

Not available.

External References