A Nashville woman who rebuffed a man’s advances had to run for her life after he went on a violent tirade and kicked in her car’s windshield.
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Bailey Cantrell said she was approached by a man at a local gas station who asked her for her phone number and made several advances toward her, while also calling her names. She said she told him several times she wasn’t interested, but it didn’t work and the man continued to pursue her, NBC12 reports.
“My friend had gone into the gas station to get something and I was waiting outside, and this man approached me and was asking for my phone number and was calling me all these names,” Bailey said.
“After I declined, still a little bit mad, then the second I declined the third time and said ‘I’m gay, I’m just not interested,’ that’s when it triggered him and he got very aggressive,” Cantrell said.
Video surveillance shows the moment the man jumped on Bailey’s car and started stomping away on her windshield.
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Cantrell was in the vehicle and first frantically tried to back away to get the man off the hood of her car. When that didn’t frighten the man, she said, she jumped out of the car and ran.
“The only thing I was thinking while this was going on is he might have a weapon, he might have a knife, a gun, I don’t know. So pretty much just flailing every limb to get out of his grip,” she said.
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Cantrell defends her decision to back her car up, even though man have criticized her decision.
“I only reversed to try to knock him over and make him fall but that didn’t work. When I got out, I was getting out to grab my phone and call 911 and also, there was glass in my eye from where all that glass hit us. So that was uncomfortable and I just felt like I needed to get out of the car,” she said.
Cantrell who lives just a few blocks from the gas station says she now feels unsafe in that neighborhood and plans to move. She’s hoping the police will arrest the attacker soon, who was said to be housed in a rescue mission nearby.
“Since he did this and got away with it, he had no repercussions,” she said.
“He’s going to think ‘if a girl rejects me, I can do this to her. I didn’t get caught last time.’”