CLERMONT, Fla. – A Clermont man was arrested Wednesday night for allegedly holding a panicked woman at gunpoint and accusing her of following his family after she briefly stopped her car in front of his house to put an address into her GPS, according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
The woman told deputies she had just left from dropping off a friend and was stopped for about five minutes when Dajhan Van Rooyen, 40, emerged shirtless from the house she had parked in front of. She didn’t think much of it, left and had already turned onto another street when Van Rooyen, now driving, suddenly pulled in front of her at a high speed and cut her off, according to a news release.
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Van Rooyen exited his vehicle, pulled a gun and demanded the woman leave her car as well, something she initially refused but eventually obliged, deputies said. The man demanded to know why the victim was “following his family” and would not accept the woman’s explanation that she was just using her phone, threatening to shoot her if she got back into her car, according to the release. She begged him to let her call police, but he allegedly would threaten her with the gun whenever she asked, telling her that he was already on the phone with 911, deputies said.
At around the same time, Van Rooyen’s wife and a bystander arrived at the scene, according to the release. The woman was able to call dispatchers as the man’s wife calmed him down, and the witness called 911 as well, telling deputies at the scene that he saw “a female with her hands in the air and a male pointing a gun at her,” deputies said.
Van Rooyen told deputies that his wife, while allegedly with their children inside of the car that he used to chase the woman down, called him before the altercation to say that “she was afraid to get out of the vehicle” because of a car “stopped in the roadway in front of their residence,” according to the release. When asked if he drew his gun, the man told deputies that “he may have removed it from his waistband and held it in his hands,” denying that he pointed it at the woman.
Van Rooyen faces charges of false imprisonment, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, deprivation of 911 and improper exhibition of a firearm.