A $40,000 bond has been set for a 30-year-old Chattanooga man who police said repeatedly rammed his truck into a car in which his six-year-old daughter was a passenger.
The car was driven by the estranged wife of Joseph Michael Hislar (AKA Joseph Michael Lawhorn), who had just broken into the home where she and her daughter were living and strangled her in front of the child, according to Hamilton County Sessions Court documents.
Roseann Hislar, 28, told officers that around 4 a.
m. her husband kicked open the locked door of her home and forced his way into the bedroom where she and her daughter had taken refuge, police reported.
He then “grabbed Roseann by the throat and asked her what she had been drinking and who she had been (sleeping with),” the police report continued. “She stated that he continued the strangulation hold until her daughter yelled for him to stop...Roseann then stated that while he went to another room she grabbed the keys to the car along with her daughter and left the house. She said when he noticed they left Joseph got into his truck and chased her down the road.”
According to the police report, Mrs. Hislar told officers that her husband “drove his truck next to her driver’s side door and rammed her vehicle several times, knowing that his daughter was in the vehicle.”
The vehicular attack came to an end after “the back passenger side of his truck struck the front driver’s side of her vehicle, causing the truck to lose control and turn sideways,” according to the report. “(Mrs. Hislar)...fishtailed the truck and struck the vehicle on the passenger’s side and the vehicle wrecked off the road.”
She said that she then went to the nearest gas station (Kangaroo, 7020 East Brainerd Road) followed by a witness motorist (Jason and Savannah Crouch), ran inside and asked for help.
“When Roseann arrived at the Kangaroo, witnesses say they saw Joseph running up the street from the wreck to the gas station,” police explained. “When Joseph arrived at the gas station witness (Crouch) stated that they observed Joseph slashing the tires of the vehicle with a pocket knife and taking the keys out of the ignition.”
Hislar was charged with two counts of aggravated domestic assault and felony reckless endangerment, officers reported, and taken to the Hamilton County Jail.