Commuter Charged in Route 1 Snack Attack

A lane change.

A finger.

And -- splat! -- a Dairy Queen Blizzard.

Those are just the facts, ma'am, as authorities in Virginia unravel the third known road rage case in a year involving a fast-food item hurled at a motorist.

Spotsylvania County authorities arrested Latasha M. Johnson, 25, of Stafford on Wednesday after she allegedly threw a Blizzard Flavor Treat at another car on Route 1 in Massaponax, just south of Fredericksburg.

Johnson was charged with throwing a missile at an occupied vehicle, a felony charge that attracted national attention when another 25-year-old woman was convicted of the same offense in January.

That caper came to be known as the "McMissile" case, because the item in question was a large McDonald's cup filled with ice.

The Blizzard incident has some of the same markings as that of the McMissile, although Johnson was in the passenger's seat when she allegedly vented her anger.

Jessica Hall of Jacksonville, N.C., said she threw the McDonald's cup in frustration last July 2 when a driver cut in front of her twice on I-95 in Stafford County. The unemployed mother of three whose Marine husband was serving in Iraq became an object of sympathy from people across the nation who felt her jail sentence -- two years -- was too harsh. She ended up serving seven weeks before being released to her family and a crush of media.

Two days after she got out of the slammer, a Loudoun County man was charged with tossing a cup of coffee from his car into another vehicle, then briefly fighting with the other driver at a Fairfax County intersection.

Wednesday's incident unfolded about 5:15 p.m. when the alleged victim -- a 30-year-old woman driving a Ford Explorer -- changed from the right lane to the left on the part of Route 1 known as Jefferson Davis Highway.

The woman looked in her rearview mirror and noticed the driver of an Oldsmobile making an obscene gesture at her.