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'Brawl' Between Victim & Suspect's Families Breaks Out as Man Faces Murder Charge for Alleged 'Road Rage' Death
16 days ago
The victim's aunt was bleeding after the fight, which went down after a Massachusetts man was charged with the murder of a woman police say was struck by his car in a "road rage" incident ... and his lawyer labeled an "accident."
Moments after a Massachusetts man was arraigned on murder charges, a fight broke out between the families of the suspect and victim outside of the hearing.
On Tuesday, emotions were clearly running high after Ryan Sweatt ( pictured, below insetI ), 36, appeared in court following an alleged road rage incident which resulted in the death of 26-year-old Destini Decoff ( pictured, above inset ). Sweatt was previously charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon causing serious bodily injury -- to which he pleaded not guilty -- before the charges were upgraded to murder on Monday night .
After the hearing, a "brawl" -- as FOX25 put it -- went down in the hallways outside, between Sweatt and Decoff's family members.
See the unfiltered video, via 7NEWS reporter Steve Cooper, below:
"The animal's family tried to go after my sister," the victim's mother, Tracey Decoff, told reporters after the dustup, which left Dawn Anderson -- Destini's aunt ( pictured ) -- wiping blood from her cut neck.
"I didn't expect for their family to come after us," added Tracey. "You wouldn't think that way because we didn't do anything — they did. And as soon as we walked in, they were staring at us as if we did something to them."
"She came towards me and tried to grab the top of my hair but as you can see my hair's slicked back so that kind of didn't work and I got her on the ground," Anderson also told reporters. "Destini will get her justice somehow, someway, but that family is sick, sick, sick, sick."
Nobody was arrested and there were no serious injuries, according to WCVB .
Sweatt was driving in Hopkinton, MA on April 4 when authorities say he got into an "apparent road rage incident" with another vehicle, in which Decoff was a passenger.
Per a press release from the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office, "the preliminary investigation suggests that Sweatt was operating a Honda Civic on Route 85 in Hopkinton when he became engaged in an apparent road rage incident with another vehicle."
"At some point, some of the occupants of the other vehicle, including the victim, exited the car. Sweatt subsequently made a U-turn at a high rate of speed and struck the victim in the roadway," the release added.
Decoff was transported to the hospital, where she died three days later.
Sweatt's attorney, however, told FOX25 that "this is not a road rage case" at all.
"This was an accident that resulted when Ryan tried to get away from the group of people who came out of their car to attack him," he told the outlet this week. "He did not see the person who was struck."
"He stopped his car after the impact and cooperated with the police. There is a lot more to what was reported in the news and as the facts come to light, I am confident it will become obvious this was a just a tragic accident," the statement continued. "Ryan is a peaceful person who has always maintained a clean record with a long history of gainful employment. He was going home from work when the accident happened."
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