Two fathers were arrested and charged with attempted murder after carelessly opening fire on each other and as a result, shooting their own daughters in a macho gun battle as the pair drove in Florida, on October 8. 

William Hale, 35, and Frank Allison, 43, strangers, got into a potentially fatal high-speed chase. The altercation resulted in the pair shooting at each other’s vehicles with semi-automatic weapons and was finally stopped by the police when they stopped on the highway and started fighting.

Welcome to the Wild Wild West in Florida. No joke. It’s not funny.

According to Bill Leeper, Nassau County Sheriff, two girls got injured during the battle. The 5-year-old daughter of William Hale got shot in her leg, while Allison’s daughter, 14, got shot in the back, resulting in a collapsed lung.

The seemingly shocked county sheriff released a statement on Facebook saying that the one thing that is scarier than a crazy driver with a gun is two crazy drivers with guns. He said that, fortunately, there were no fatalities, but the incident could have turned deadly easily because two ‘stupid’ people let their anger control them.

The Sheriff said that the authorities and families could have easily been dealing with the case of two dead children and two irresponsible grown men.

According to Leeper, the Sheriff’s department received numerous 911 calls reporting two people shooting at each other on Highway 1 in Jacksonville. A witness said that Hale was driving a black Dodge Ram with five people while Allison’s car was a Nissan Murano with three occupants. The witness said he called 911 because the vehicles were driving so recklessly that he knew something bad would happen.

Both vehicles were speeding and brake-checking each other to cut each other off. During the encounter, Hale brought his dodge alongside Allison’s Murano and started shouting at him to pull over. The person sitting in Murano’s co-driver’s seat flipped her middle finger at Hale’s car, and then someone from Hale’s car threw a plastic water bottle into the Nissan Murano.

Leeper said that Allison reacted to this by taking his handgun and firing a shot at Hale’s Dodge Ram and then driving away. The shot went straight through the right rear door and hit Hales’s daughter in her leg. When questioned, Allison told authorities that he fired the gun to escape the situation.

After realizing that his daughter was hit, Hale started chasing the Nissan, and when he eventually caught up to it, he took his Glock 9mm semi-automatic and started firing the gun at the Nissan. Hale told authorities that he fired all the rounds in the magazine, about eight bullets. Unfortunately, one of the bullets hit Allison’s 14-year-old daughter in the back.

The two vehicles stopped when they noticed deputies, and the two drivers got out of their cars and started fighting until officers broke up the fight. Fire and Rescue units took the two girls to the hospital, and their gunshot wounds were not life-threatening.

The two fathers were arrested and charged with attempted murder in the second degree by the Nassau County jail. However, they were released on $150,000 bond.