VANCOUVER, WA (KPTV) -
A Vancouver man is accused of pulling a gun on two other men after they honked at him on Sunday afternoon.
Ryan Reese, 27, was arraigned on assault charges Monday morning.
"He just seemed like a normal person who obviously was having a bad day," said Tyler Backman, one of the two men Reese is accused of threatening. "A little honk on the horn obviously set him off."
Backman said he was in the passenger seat while a friend drove them east down Southeast 15th Street.
A car pulled in front of them, cutting them off "to an extent to where we had to slam on our brakes. So I guess the natural reaction was to honk," said Backman, who added that his friend yelled something along the lines of "way to cut me off" at the driver.
When the cars stopped at the light at Southeast 192nd Avenue, Backman said the driver, Reese, got out and began punching his friend through the open driver's side window.
"As he was getting out of the car, running up to the drivers' window, it was ‘bleep this, bleep that.' He was pretty ticked off," he said.
Backman said he got out of the car and ran to the driver's side, intending to stop Reese from hurting his friend.
"(By) the time when I ran around the car, he was like, ‘Get the f--- back in the car, I'll shoot you,'" he said. "Then my buddy got out and he was like, ‘I'll kill you too.'"
Backman said the two immediately backed off while Reese got into his car and drove away. They called police, who arrested the man a short time later.
He is in the Clark County Jail on $50,000 bail. Prosecutors asked for a stiffer bail, noting, "The nature of these events was very violent," but the judge set it lower, noting Reese had no violent criminal history.
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