A grudge stretching back to high school put one UF student on the windshield of a car and another in jail Thursday morning.
Cornelia Dean ended the night with a broken wrist after Shalonda Lewis hit Dean with her car. Lewis was arrested and charged with aggravated battery.
The feud, though, was not between Dean and Lewis.
Dean was protecting her friend DeCara Jones, who had a long-standing feud with Lewis. A Gainesville Police report and witnesses gave this account:
After a night out at Status Nightclub, Jones ran into Lewis at 2 a.m. at the entrance of 2nd Avenue Centre apartments, where Jones lives and Lewis was visiting a friend on the first floor. They are both from Lakeland and know each other through mutual friends.
Jones, a philosophy junior, said she and Lewis had issues three or four years ago that were never resolved. Lately, the two had been cordial. They go to the same parties, and earlier that night they had said hello to each other in the club's bathroom.
Jones said she couldn't even remember how the feud started.
But standing outside the apartment complex Thursday morning, Lewis flashed Jones a "dirty look." Later, in the hallway, she continued to stir the pot.
"She was yelling," Jones said. "She was like, ‘Yes, DeCara, I don't like you. That's why I looked at you like that.'"
Lewis then walked into her friend's apartment. Jones went to her own and hung out on the back porch, where she and friends ate Taco Bell and smoked cigarettes.
About 15 minutes later, Lewis walked by. Jones' porch looks out onto Southwest Third Avenue, where Lewis' car was parked.
"What's up," Jones said.
Lewis screamed, threatening to run Jones and her friends over. She started her car, pulled a U-turn and stopped in front of the porch, Jones said. Lewis repeatedly drove forward and reversed, yelling at Jones and her friends.
"She just kept telling me to get in the middle of the road," Jones said.
Instead, Jones' friend Cornelia Dean walked to the brick sidewalk. Dean, a psychology and classics junior, also happened to be friends with Lewis.
"Get out of the car or go home," Dean said.
Lewis didn't. She gunned it. The right side of the car hopped over the curb and Lewis steered toward Dean.
Dean jumped, landing face-first on the windshield. She lay across the hood, legs dangling off the front. Lewis drove for about 50 feet, according to police.
"You know how people say their life flashes before their eyes?" Dean asked. "Literally, my life flashed before me. I was on top, thinking, ‘OK, I'm on this vehicle. How am I going to get off?' Luckily, I have quick reflexes, or this could have been like 100 times worse."
She fell off of the hood, breaking her right wrist. But Lewis kept coming, she said. Dean had to roll out of the way before getting hit again.
Jones, meanwhile, watched the whole event from the porch.
"I was the one she was having problems with," Jones said. "I was the farthest person from her. I was just hanging back on the patio."
Lewis was charged with aggravated battery. She declined to comment Thursday evening.
Lewis was featured in a January 2010 edition of the Alligator. She participated in the Writing on the Wall Project, during which she was asked to write a hurtful statement on a brick on the Reitz Union North Lawn.
She wrote "WhoRE" on her brick.
"I think we tend to prejudge others and go off what they have on rather than who they are," she said at the time.
