New Lenox 'Machete Man' Says He Was Just Worried About His Kid Getting Hit By A Car

The New Lenox machete man said he merely confronted a neighbor about his continued speeding through his subdivision and denied menacing anyone with any sort of weapon.

"I didn't have a machete," said Adam Nelson, a 30-year-old father who says he is gravely worried about his 10-year-old son getting hit by a speeding car.

Nelson admits to confronting a neighbor he accused of constantly speeding through Royal Meadows subdivision but insists he was unarmed.

"I was ready to fight one-on-one," Nelson said. "I didn't even have a screwdriver. A pack of smokes and a lighter—that's all I had."

The police arrested Nelson July 12 on charges of aggravated assault and criminal damage to property. A neighbor accused Nelson of showing up at her house with a machete.

"Adam got to our house and I saw a machete in his hands," the woman wrote in a petition for a protective order. "We got back into the house. Adam was standing in our driveway yelling that he was going to skin us and that he was going to burn our house down. He was banging the machete on my son's car."

The woman said she called the cops on Nelson more than once.

"The police have told me Adam is an alcoholic but this is not an excuse for him coming to my property threatening to skin me and my family and burn our house down," she said in her petition. "He will come to my house yelling and screaming. Adam is upset about someone four-wheeling but we don't own a four-wheeler."

Nelson said that is all lies and the woman who wrote the petition is the mother of the 25-year-old man he confronted about speeding.

"He ran behind his dad and hid behind his dad," Nelson said of the man.

And while there is a problem with people speeding on four-wheelers and dirt bikes in his subdivision, Nelson said, the man was behind the wheel of a car on the night in question.

"He came within an inch of hitting me," Nelson said, telling how he was climbing out of his truck when the man sped by.

Court records show the man was cited for speeding three times in the last seven years in Will County alone. He was also charged with failing to reduce speed to avoid an accident, improper turn signal, improper merging, improper traffic lane usage and following too closely, all in the same seven-year time period.

Nelson said he has complained to the police but they will not take action.

"They say, 'There's nothing we can do about it unless we see them. We have to catch them in the act,'" Nelson said.

Nelson pointed out that he was arrested without the police catching him in the act.

"I was in my house when they arrested me," he said. "They had no evidence. They didn't even take my side of the story."

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