Those poor SS residents. I hope the evidence, the power line, can be restrung for them. For the sake of the poor victim, I wish this guy had flipped out in some other way. Scary!

Clearly the man is bonkers. I do not get how he picked up the live wire without getting zapped, would have served him right.

I suggest his attempt to harm the man with the live power line could be construed as attempted murder.

I worked for the phone company for years, and come to think of it, he had to have picked up the phone line! It is the first wire from the ground with all the electrical ones above it. (This is done for telephone workers safety) So there was nothing electrified about it. The headline for the article should have read "Utility Line" ... I'd hate to think that someone would think that being drunk gave you the ability to handle "hot wires". If only the poor guy in the car had gotten out and wrapped the line around his attackers neck, then the headline could have read; "Phone line proves invaluable in saving victim from Nut Job"......

We live less than 100 yards from where this incident occurred and inspected the downed wires after the storm passed. There appeared to be three wires draped over a tree and hanging down. Two of the wires were touching the street, and the third was hung up higher in the tree. Ordinarily phone drops to homes are a single cable, not three distinct wires. The wires appeared to be the power drop from a power pole to a house on the opposite side of the street. However there was no sparking as was reported (when we saw them on Sunday). We believe the power company had already killed the power to these lines by the time the incident occurred. Admittedly the latter is guess work, but even if the wires were dead and not carrying electricity, of course neither of the drivers would have known this.

Question: Why did we not get a photo of the "Nut Job' Attorney, Richard Bialczak, instead of the police badge pics? We got a nice pic of the Nut with the fireworks device mounted on his car at the National Park.

I guess that attorney was neither too drunk or stupid to know they power lines knocked out by Irene. AND with Pepco in charge of the restore, he could have danced all night with them in his teeth...and maybe the next day too. LOL

You should have mentioned which law firm this guy is employed by........I would think he will be looking for new employment in the near future. Also, which bar plied this bum with booze?

Something is odd about this story. First, why is this event being called "storm rage"? Other than the downed wires, the hurricane has nothing to do with what happened. Second, why would the driver pick at random this one young man to "attack"? No one has mentioned it, but it sounds more like what would occur after a traffic incident and/or some perceived insult, words/gestures exchanged, etc. Last, having seen the power wires, I'm still dubious about the claim that they were hot and "sparking". Evidently no reporters have verified with Pepco whether they left the wires hot after the yellow warning tapes were put up. Live wires or not may be legally beside the point legally, but it would still be interesting to know given how much the TV and print media are making of this story.

It really seems there is more to this story than we currently know.

Don't believe they've said much about the male victim: Young or old, African-Amer. or other, did he speak english, was he a foreigner, was he alone, where were they when the chase began. There's more to this story than we've heard. I think he either knew or recognized the victim. Had he rammed my car, I would have shot him 'between the legs' - non life-threatening technique.

A neighbor who lives adjacent to the event and was on the scene just confirmed for us today that the wire or wires were definitely live and sparking on Sunday.

It's hard to believe that the wires were left "hot" for so long. Maybe this was a sign of Pepco negligence, or maybe just of the magnitude of the outages they were dealing with. Futhermore, since it isn't clear who put up the yellow warning tapes, maybe Pepco didn't even have a report about the wires. This could have occurred if the warning tapes were placed by the police instead of Pepco.

The victim is a young man, apparently in his twenties. His car is a small foreign car (something similar to a Honda Civic, etc.). From its appearance, the young man is working on the car (lots of gray primer, etc.). The TV news stories made a lot about the fact that the attacker ripped off the front bumper of the car, an act which would have ordinarily required inhuman strength (even with today's plastic bumpers). However the bumper appeared to have been damaged at an earlier time and so presumably wasn't held on very well to begin with.

It will be interesting to see whether the true facts behind this story comes out in court.

Sebastian Montes
3:47pm on Friday, September 2, 2011
It is profoundly troubling that so many news agencies have published the alleged victim's name. That flies in the face of long-standing ethical standards.

Really? Like how? i was a newspaper reporter and have been a journalist for 30 years. You surely can report the name of an "alleged" crime victim, unless it is case involving domestic violence, a minor or for some other reason that might jeopardize the safety of the victim.

Probably some good old reporting might get a lot of details flowing.

That's not up to a reporter to decide. It would be made by the police. If the reporters knew something additional, then they would be ethically bound to consider it. I fail to see the ethical breach you think occurred here. And be careful about attacking our peers and profession-- press attacking press. There's enough of happening from the outside. Nice chatting with you.