Video footage captured by a bystander shows the victim, Joshua Evans, running away as Dave Anthony Williams, 33, swings a machete at him. At one point, Evans trips, and Williams slashes at the victim’s face, hands and wrists.
Evans had to seek treatment at a hospital to get stitches for cuts on his hands and wrists.
"Stitches on this finger. Stitches on my wrist. He caught me in the back," Evans told WSBTV.
"Anything could’ve happened to me. I could’ve lost my life over that,” he added.
Williams followed Evans into a Texaco station, presumably after an incident on the road, although the cause of the altercation is unclear.
"The light just turned green. The man is just honking his horn," Evans explained.
The two men exchanged hostilities at the gas station, and Evans said he threw a punch in self-defense when Williams charged at him. At that point, Williams went to his car and grabbed the machete.
"I hear a lady like, 'He has a machete. He has a machete.' So I'm trying to run from him," Evans said.
According to the unidentified man who caught the incident on camera, Williams didn’t appear to want to kill Evans, but “it did look like he wanted to hurt him bad.”
Williams sped away from the gas station, but he left a vest with a nametag at the scene, and Evans was able to give police his license plate number, AJC reported.
On Saturday night, police arrested Williams near a local Walmart, less than a mile away from the gas station where the altercation took place.
The arrest warrant states that Williams assaulted Evans with the intent to murder, chasing him around the gas pump and slashing him with the machete multiple times.
“After said victim was on the ground, said accused did continue to attempt to strike said victim by swinging the machete,” the July 27 warrant, obtained by the Marietta Daily Journal, states.
Williams is currently in custody without bond for felony aggravated assault and misdemeanor battery.