The crash shattered the rear windshield of Evan Rees' Honda sedan. Sitting in the back seat, Rees, a 44-year-old teacher from Sebring, gaped through the empty window frame at the truck that had rear-ended his family on Interstate 4 east of Tampa.
He didn't have long to stare, as a man jumped from the truck's driver-side door and stormed toward the Honda. Rees, who had spent the afternoon at the Florida State Fair with his wife, sister and niece, stepped out to meet him. As a shouting match erupted, the man grabbed him, and the pair tumbled to the ground.
Bystanders pulled them apart. But as Rees rose to his knees, he found himself staring down the barrel of a Glock pistol. His assailant had drawn a gun and aimed it at him. According to the accounts of multiple witnesses, he threatened to kill Rees before lowering his gun.
"I thought I was going to die," Rees later told an investigator.
What the man pulled out next was equally shocking: a badge. The 55-year-old who had attacked and pulled a gun on Rees on the side of I-4 was Thomas Pettis, an off-duty Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office homicide detective.
The surprises weren't over. As Rees waited for the police to arrive, Pettis moved through the crowd that had gathered and punched Rees in the head.
In the wake of his actions that Feb. 15, Pettis was criminally charged and retired from the Sheriff's Office. But two months later, questions linger about law enforcement's handling of the episode.
Pettis' brandishing of a handgun could meet the statutory definition of aggravated assault with a firearm, a felony punishable by a prison sentence of at least three years and up to five. Yet he is only being prosecuted for misdemeanor battery, a charge that qualifies him for pretrial intervention programs and the avoidance of criminal penalties.
Prosecutors, following what some say is a tenuous line of legal reasoning, asserted that Pettis pointed the gun at Rees in self-defense, even though the detective initiated the conflict and the fight was already broken up when he drew his weapon.
The conduct of the Sheriff's Office also raises questions.
Despite being the only suspect in a felony criminal investigation, Pettis was never booked into the county jail, sparing him the humiliating ritual in which ordinary citizens see their mug shots land on the Internet.
And a video of the confrontation captured by a teenager on her cellphone was collected by a sheriff's deputy, who then urged the girl's parents to delete their copy of the footage before leaving the crime scene, according to the girl's father, a bystander with no connection to Pettis or Rees.
Rees and some legal professionals familiar with the case wonder whether Pettis received favorable treatment because of his status as a veteran sheriff's deputy — and, perhaps more significantly, his importance to dozens of open homicide cases.
