Crime
The 60-year-old is charged with assault to murder and other firearm offenses.
A Hingham man was arrested in connection with a road rage incident on Thursday outside a Hingham library, in which he allegedly fired two shots at a driver, police said.
Steven License, 60, is charged with assault to murder, assault with a dangerous weapon, discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a building, and two counts of attempt to commit assault and battery with a firearm, court records show.
License was arraigned Friday and pleaded not guilty. He was ordered held without bail pending a dangerousness hearing Wednesday, per records.
The incident began shortly before 4:30 p.m. when License’s wife, who was driving the car in which he was a passenger, threw a napkin out of the window, Hingham police said on Facebook.. A truck driver then followed their car until they turned into the library parking lot located at 66 Leavitt St., the department said.
A heated verbal dispute erupted between the truck driver and License’s wife after they exited their vehicles, police wrote in a report filed in Hingham District Court.
License, who was sitting in the passenger seat, then allegedly fired two shots at the truck driver as the truck driver was walking back toward his truck, police said in the report.
The shots missed the truck driver, who fled the scene before authorities arrived. He later contacted the police and explained that he cannot tolerate littering and “is extremely opposed to it,” per the police report.
After authorities arrived to the parking lot, License was taken to the South Shore Hospital in Weymouth for “stress related symptoms.” He was later detained at the hospital, police said.
During interviews with authorities, License said the truck driver had hit his wife during the confrontation and firing his gun was “more than self-defense.”
However, police noted that video evidence showed the truck driver “engaging in obvious tumultuous behavior by yelling and flailing his arms aggressively,” but confirmed that he “did not physically harm her.”
“It doesn’t appear a violent assault ever took place and the immediate defense of life action (discharging a firearm) made by Steven License does not seem reasonable for a verbal altercation,” police wrote in the report.
An attorney for License did not respond to a request for comment Sunday afternoon.
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