In the first reported incident of parking lot rage at Anne Arundel County's new mega-mall, two drivers and a passenger climbed out of sport utility vehicles over the weekend in a fight that included a whack with a baseball bat, police said.
A Dundalk man and a Laurel couple were charged with assaulting each other after the confrontation Saturday afternoon in an Arundel Mills parking lot.
According to police, William D. Vermillion, 34, of the 9600 block of Glendower Court in Laurel drove his 1995 Jeep out of a parking space into the path of a 1994 Ford Explorer driven by Gary Thomas Oneill, 24, of the 600 block of Waterview Drive in Dundalk.
Oneill, who was forced to slam on his brakes, began yelling obscenities, according to witness accounts reported by police, and Vermillion got out of his Jeep to see if the vehicles had been damaged.
Oneill got out of his Explorer, allegedly with a baseball bat hidden behind his back, and approached Vermillion, according to the police report. But Oneill, reached by telephone yesterday, said he was getting back into his Explorer when his right foot touched his daughter's T-ball bat and he reached to move it out of the way - not to hit anyone.
According to Oneill, Vermillion's companion, Jennifer Lynne Shelton, 30, of the same address in Laurel, was trying to grab the bat. "She was jerking it, trying to grab it away," said Oneill, an apartment maintenance technician.
While the two men were fighting, police said, Shelton hit Oneill with the bat.
Oneill initially refused medical treatment, said Officer Charles Ravenell, a county police spokesman. He was subsequently treated at North Arundel Hospital for facial injuries.
Oneill and Shelton were charged with first- and second-degree assault and possession of a deadly weapon, and Vermillion has been charged with second-degree assault, Ravenell said.