In a shocking road rage incident, a woman brutally assaulted another female driver after a bumper bash in Honeydew, Johannesburg, repeatedly punching her in the face and stomach.
Both the attacker and the victim had young children with them in their vehicles when the attack occurred in Beyers Naudé Drive on a rainy Monday morning last week.
When a witness pulled over to intervene and filmed some of the attack, the angry attacker turned on her, screaming expletives and banging on her car window. When a taxi driver came to help, she slapped him too. When he slapped her back, she broke his side mirror.
After some amateur sleuthing by the witness, Candice Adams was this week arrested and charged with assault and malicious damage to property.
The attacker lost her temper when the driver behind her, who was on her way to drop a six-year old boy at school — skidded on the wet road and hit the back of her car at the Juice Road intersection.
The driver of the rear-ended car immediately jumped out and stormed over to the driver behind her, screaming: “You bitch. F**k you. Look what you’ve done to my car.”
The victim spoke to the Sunday Times this week, but asked to be identified only by her first name, Zandi, as she is a single parent with young children and her family is terrified for her safety.
Zandi said that, in shock, she tried to calm the woman who pulled her door open. But the enraged woman punched her repeatedly in her right eye.
When the attacker walked back to her car, Zandi stepped out of her vehicle, only for her attacker to return and punch her in the stomach, and again in the face. Meanwhile the six-year-old in the back seat of Zandi's car started crying and pleading to “talk to the lady so I can ask her why she is hitting you”.
As the child tried to climb out of the back door, Zandi pushed him back in as she pleaded with her attacker.
“I saw she also had a child with her, so I said let’s just talk about this mother to mother, woman to woman,” Zandi told the Sunday Times. “But she just screamed: ‘Bitch, look what you did’ and she hit me again and again in the face.”
Zandi, who more than a week after the attack is still sporting burst blood vessels in her eye, has been referred to a specialist to determine if the damage is permanent.
She was acting wild, calling me a f**king illegal bitch driving an unroadworthy vehicle
— Zandi
Author Jo Watson was passing when she witnessed the first attack on Zandi, pulled up and began filming and called out: “Stop beating that woman.”
Infuriated by the interference, the attacker then turned on Watson.
Watson continued recording as the woman approached her car, shouting: “You f**k off. Who are you to tell me? F**k you, bitch. F**k off.” She then struck out at Watson, banging on her window as she closed it to ward off the attack.
Unnerved, Watson drove home. Paramedics arrived on the scene and tried to examine Zandi as her attacker demanded to see her driving licence and took photos of her licence disc.
“She was acting wild, calling me a f**king illegal bitch driving an unroadworthy vehicle,” said Zandi, whose licence is legal and valid.
“A taxi driver came over to see if I needed help, and she slapped him in the face. He slapped her back, so she broke his mirror. She was crazy and accused me of calling people to come and fight her. She said: ‘Bitch, I’m going to kill you’.”
Zandi said the attacker then kicked her car and smashed the right headlight. She said at that time, a sobbing young girl, aged about 12, climbed out of the attacker's car and “apologised for her mother’s behaviour”.
“Then they drove off. The emergency guys told me she was going to the police station and that I needed to also go and make a report, but I needed to get the little boy to school and I was in shock, so I went home.”
Because she had failed to take down details of the accident, Zandi felt unable to report the matter as she had no information to provide to police.
Meanwhile Watson, also at her home in shock, began watching the video footage repeatedly.
“I realised that I had evidence. So I decided to track down the victim and the perpetrator because what happened was not OK,” Watson said.
She posted a video on TikTok, describing the vicious assault she had witnessed.
“I’ve got quite a few thousand followers, and although I didn’t post any of the video footage, I knew people would start talking about it,” Watson told the Sunday Times.
She also hired a private investigator and gave him the registration number of the attacker's car. He came back to her with a name: C Adams.
“So I went on a deep dive, searching everywhere for C Adams and came across her LinkedIn profile. I didn’t recognise her. A friend then suggested that I run her picture through AI facial recognition software. So I took a still from the video, paid for the transaction and ran it through,” Watson said.
“And suddenly there she was. Candice Adams, an education specialist and community manager for an education business,” Watson said, describing the horror she felt at discovering that Adams worked with young people and declared her passion as “empowering people, especially children”.
Her post attracted numerous responses — one being a newly created fake profile in which the anonymous writer posted: “You have got nothing better to do ... than sit on your ass and get involved in matters that have got nothing to do with you. I think it's time you got back in your lane and get out of lanes that will ultimately get you rear ended hard ... p**s hard actually,” read the first direct contact.
A string of messages followed, accusing Watson of being a cocaine user and threatening her further.
“Are [you] aware that the driver and vehicle that caused the accident is illegal on our national road. Continue with your quest. You will realise soon that your creativity will bring huge harm to those innocent.”
Undeterred, Watson continued to post about the incident.
A few days later Zandi was visiting her sister and explained her ordeal to a friend who had come across Watson’s posts. She then made contact with Watson.
“Jo was great. She sent me the video and offered to be with me every step of the way,” Zandi said.
Armed with evidence, Zandi opened a case of assault at the Honeydew police station. She went for a medical examination, which confirmed she had sustained severe damage to her right eye. She has been referred to a specialist.
Adams was arrested on Wednesday.
“We ended up arriving at the police station at the same time. I was looking forward to seeing her. I wanted her to see my face, and I wanted to see her face. But she was a completely different person. She acted almost like she was shy, and she was just focused on her phone and wouldn’t look up at all,” said Zandi.
Adams was released and appeared in court on Thursday, when the matter was postponed for further investigation.
Watson is thrilled to have been able to aid Zandi, and is sticking firmly by her side throughout the process. She is also starting a crowdfunding page for her new friend to help cover all her losses.
“Zandi is a driver, but she can’t do her job because her vision is too bad. She cannot earn her living, and it’s costing her money because she has to Uber her kids to school and back,” Watson said.
Clinical psychologist Dr Gérard Labuschagne, former head of the SAPS Investigative Psychology unit now practicising in forensic and investigative psychology, said while there have been several extreme cases of road rage in South Africa, there was no way of predicting or understanding an individual’s state of mind when it happens.
“Nobody can say when or why a person will act in a particular way, And it can come down to a stack of different reasons — the person had a very bad day, they were emotional, possibly under the influence, or just a horrible person who loses control and has no respect for others,” he said.
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