Charges dropped in road rage case for victims' 'lack of credibility'

Jay Allen Barbeau (Deschutes County Jail)

Charges were dropped against a man accused of hurting two women in a horrific road-rage attack after Oregon prosecutors found too many holes in the victims’ stories — and that they had a history of apparently faking injuries in other vehicular incidents.

Jay Allen Barbeau, 49, was arrested June 1 after Megan Stackhouse, 34, and her fiancée, Lucinda Mann, 26, told officers in Bend that he attacked them after their Kia Soul cut him off in traffic. Stackhouse had claimed that she pulled over to let Barbeau pass them, but the imposing, 5-foot-8, 245-pound man instead smashed their rear window before breaking Stackhouse’s arm and knocking Mann unconscious.

But Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel said most of the allegations could not be proved — and that Barbeau’s 11-day stint in jail and the “national ridicule he endured for the road-rage attack was a just punishment.

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“I have no confidence in the credibility of Mann and Stackhouse,” Hummel said in a statement. “Mann’s claimed injuries in the Barbeau case were debunked by the medical records. While Stackhouse did suffer a broken bone in her wrist, there are competing claims as to how her injury occurred and based on her lack of credibility, I cannot stand by her version of events.”

Here’s what is clear, according to Hummel: Stackhouse, who was leaving a carnival with Mann, pulled her car in front of Barbeau’s in a “dangerous manner,” he said. Barbeau then started aggressively following Stackhouse for more than a mile, eventually exiting his car and punching Stackhouse’s rear window, shattering it, Hummel said.