A good Samaritan rammed his SUV into a 61-year-old Oklahoma woman’s car to stop her from mowing down her ex-boyfriend in a parking lot after she repeatedly slammed into his vehicle and shoved it onto a busy street, cops said.
The chaotic scene unfolded just after 9 a.m. on Sept. 23 outside a gas station and hardware store in the 3200 block of North 14th Street in Ponca City, according to police and security footage. Officers were already in the area searching for an endangered missing person when they began fielding multiple reports of a hit-and-run.
Ruth Ann Harper, of Ponca City, was behind the wheel of a white sedan and had rammed the man’s vehicle several times, forcing it northbound into southbound lanes, police said. Video captured her car sitting briefly in the grass before she accelerated toward the victim as he fled on foot.
The man, who police said had been in a dating relationship with Harper that recently ended, sprinted through the parking lot while she circled the area in pursuit. She drove through a group of people near the scene and continued accelerating even as officers arrived, according to accounts in the police report.
A bystander in a red SUV who had been watching the confrontation then pulled his vehicle into Harper’s path and struck her car from the side as she closed in on the running man near an officer. The impact stopped the chase. Police surrounded Harper’s sedan, ordered her out at gunpoint, and took her into custody. The man was not injured.
Harper was initially arrested on multiple counts of assault with a dangerous weapon. Prosecutors later charged her with two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, driving under the influence of drugs, reckless driving, malicious injury to property over $1,000, and leaving the scene of an accident involving damage, according to court documents. Officers found prescription medications in her vehicle, and one noted she appeared impaired and unable to drive safely, records show.
Harper had been arrested by Ponca City police on Aug. 16 on a misdemeanor domestic abuse, assault and battery charge stemming from an earlier incident with the same man. That case was dismissed days before the parking-lot confrontation, local reports said.
In the back of a patrol car after her arrest, Harper repeatedly told officers she did not know what she had done, according to court documents.
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