GUILDERLAND — Just before 7 a.m. last Thursday morning, a woman drove her sport utility vehicle along Route 20 from the intersection with Schoolhouse Road to 1769 Western Ave. with a man on its hood.

The driver, Nancy Ware, 73, and the 57-year-old man on the hood, Michael Tybur, were both terrified on the less-than-two-mile stretch.

“I was flabbergasted at the whole situation and the way it played out,” said Ware.

“I was fighting for my life,” said Tybur this week.

He said he was shocked to hear, from The Enterprise, Ware’s view; the two had never communicated.

Briefly, Ware’s view is that she encountered an extreme case of road rage where an irate motorist tried to intimidate her and then got out of his car and jumped on the hood of hers, breaking through the windshield with his fist, and pummeling her as she drove.

Tybur’s view is that a speeding motorist rear-ended his car and refused to stop. When he got out to confront her and stood in front of her SUV at the intersection, she ran into him, forcing him on her hood, where he broke through the windshield in an effort to shut off her ignition while she battled him.

Inside the car

Last Thursday, Sept. 11, was Nancy Ware’s 73rd birthday. She had planned to enjoy a meal prepared by her daughter-in-law, but instead she was hospitalized at St. Peter’s and felt lucky to be alive.

The day started early for Ware. She described events unfolding this way.

She left her apartment in the senior housing community on Marquis Drive at about 6:45 a.m., driving toward Willow Street to pick up her son who has a herniated disk and needed a ride to the hospital.

Ware said she was slowly driving her 2012 Hyundai Santa Fe; she estimated her speed at 30 miles per hour. She was mindful of children waiting at school bus stops.

A man driving a compact car came up behind her, she said, and seemed impatient with her speed, tailgating her. “I did go up to 37 [miles per hour] to appease him but wouldn’t go higher,” she said.

On Schoolhouse Road, she said, “He went over the double lines to get in front of me.” She said he passed her illegally on a hill and could have caused a head-on collision had a car been coming the other way.

“Then he’d slam on the brakes, trying to intimidate me,” she said.

On a sharp bend on Schoolhouse Road, she said, by accident, “I tapped the back of his car.”

He pulled over and she was going to also. “I could see he was ranting,” she said, so she stepped on the gas. He followed. She used her cell phone to call the Guilderland Police.

At the intersection of Schoolhouse Road and Western Avenue, the traffic light was red. “I stopped…He pulls in the right lane and hops out of his car.” Ware said he then hollered, “Go box her in!” to someone whom she described as “a tall Asian man with gray hair.” That driver, she said, pulled in diagonally from her left-hand side to block her.

“I saw the light change. I threw it into reverse and then forward and went around his car,” Ware said.  

The man from the compact car then jumped on the hood of her car, she said, and tried to pull off her windshield wipers. She carried him for a mile and a half, she estimated, being careful not to stop or turn suddenly so that he wouldn’t fall off and injure himself. She estimated her speed was under 20 miles an hour.

Ware, who served for 12 years on the Western Turnpike Rescue Squad, said, in such a situation, “You go into a different mode. Your only function is doing what needs to be done with minimum injury.”

The man on her hood, whom she described as muscular and probably in his 30s, put his fist through her windshield up to his shoulder.

“It took him only three tries. He was one strong son of a gun. The muscles just rippled,” she said.

“He started with his muscular fist, pounding the side of my head,” she went on. “I have a big egg over one eye. Then he grabs me by the hair on my head. I was afraid to touch the brakes because he might go off the hood.”

She was also worried that he might bleed to death. When he broke the windshield, she was concerned the ragged glass could sever his radial artery “and he would bleed out in a few minutes.”

Her goal as she drove slowly west on the nearly deserted Route 20 was to make it to a construction crew that was building sidewalks along Western Avenue. She called the police again and asked, “Where are you guys?”

“I tried to claw him. His skin was so tough, my nails wouldn’t go through,” said Ware.

She was almost to Gipp Road, she said, when he grabbed her hair. “He was trying to pull my head down to the glass in the passenger seat,” she said, when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw an orange cone, indicating a construction crew.

“I knew I could stop then because he was embedded and wouldn’t fall off,” said Ware.

“I saw the men,” she said of the sidewalk builders. “They were marvelous.”

The man on her hood was hollering, “She’s crazy.”

The workers responded, “You’re the idiot on her car.”

Soon after, police cars converged on the scene.

On Friday, Ware, who suffers from autoimmune diseases said, “My muscles and joints are all screaming because of the emotional and physical stress…I just need to stay quiet for a few days.”

She also surmised that some day, “It will be something we can laugh at.”

On the hood

Michael Tybur, a lineman for a power company, lives at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac on Frances Lane off of Schoolhouse Road. He got in his Nissan to drive to work, as he always does, at about 6:45, on the morning of Sept. 11.

“I came out of my street as I have for 25 years,” he said. “There’s a little rise. You have to watch out. People speed. Someone came rapidly over the hill.  I sped up.”

He went on about the SUV, “She was tailgating me. She hit me, so I pulled over. She zooms by. She just took off.”

He also said, “She passed me after she hit me, almost like a NASCAR move, bumping me off the track.”

Tybur couldn’t reach his cell phone, which, he surmised because of the impact, had dropped between the seats of his car, so he followed the SUV to get the license-plate number, he said. Tybur sped up, flashing his lights and beeping his horn, and shouting, “What are you doing?”

There was a red light at the intersection of Schoolhouse Road and Western Avenue, he recalled, where the SUV had stopped. “I went to her window and said, ‘Pull over’ three times....She ignored me totally.”

When the driver didn’t respond, he said, “I stood in front of her car...She took off with me on the car. She just swept me off my feet. I grabbed the window wipers to stay on. I was petrified....I thought I’d get killed... I thought, ‘Oh my God, I have to shut off the car.’”

That was when he hit the windshield to break it; he doesn’t remember how many times. He says he was trying to reach the gear shift and ignition, but she was trying to bite him and claw him.

Tybur said he had raced motorcycles in New Hampshire and knew what it felt like to crash on asphalt wearing full leathers. He wasn’t wearing leathers. He said he briefly considered grabbing the steering wheel, but quickly rejected that idea as there was no telling where the SUV may have gone.

“In my mind, we were going 40,” he said of the speed. He also said he repeatedly yelled, “Call the police!” in case anyone could hear.

“She was doing quite a job fighting me off from getting the ignition and gear shift,” he said.

Until he heard Ware’s account, Tybur thought that he had gotten her to stop at the construction site. “I yelled, ‘Take her keys,’” he said.

He said he walked to the side and waited for the police and told them his story. He was in the ambulance, he said, where paramedics were bandaging his hand, when an officer told him he would be arrested. That shocked him, he said.

He also said, “It’s the craziest thing that ever happened in my life.”

Hearing Ware’s description of his strength, Tybur said, “I thought she was so strong...I was scared....I wasn’t mad the whole time. I was dumbfounded.”

He also said, “She never spoke. I had no knowledge of her intentions. Until you told me this, I thought I had finally gotten her to stop.”

Aftermath

Tybur was issued an appearance ticket, for fourth-degree criminal mischief, and is to be in Guilderland Town Court on Nov. 18, according to Captain Curtis Cox.

“Both sides of the story are quite different,” said Cox on Tuesday when asked about the case. “There is more than it seems on the face.”

He declined to comment further since, he said, the case is still under investigation. Cox did say that Ware called for help at 6:48 a.m. on Sept. 11 and that a police car arrived at 7 a.m. at 1769 Western Ave.

“I’m in shock,” Tybur said on Wednesday. “Truthfully, I’m scared to death,” he said of facing the charge against him. “The cops just see the age difference.”

Later on Wednesday, Ware responded, through The Enterprise, to Tybur’s account, saying, “He never stood in front of my car.” Rather, she said, Tybur jumped on from the side, surprising her as she drove.

“I’ve got the marks on the side fender to prove it,” Ware said, describing the design of her vehicle. “Between my fender and grill, there’s an indentation; he stepped on that to get the boost up,” she said.

Ware also said the police dispatcher had a recording of her call, beginning on Schoolhouse Road where she narrated Tybur’s traffic infractions as they occurred. “I hit re-dial on Western,” she said. “It’s all on tape. They can hear the glass breaking.”

Referring to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Ware said she can’t find out, because of HIPAA laws, if Tybur has a diseases that might have been communicated through blood as her car is covered with his blood and she sustained wounds. “He dug the upper part of my arm and half-way up my calf,” she said. “I tried to pin him with the leg that needs hip replacement; the pain was unbelievable.”

She said she’ll have to get blood work done to see if she incurred any disease herself. “I live on $1,000 a month,” Ware said, and she is worried about the cost of medical tests, car repairs, and legal representation.

“All he had to do was write down a license plate off the car,” she said. “That was all that was needed. That was not the choice he made.”