Someone backing out of a space in my friend’s apartment complex hit my friend’s car (while I was alone driving it). So I drove to the nearest parking space and walked back to talk to the guy who hit me. It was dark and while walking back I saw what I thought was the same car drive from where the space was towards another spot across the street after seeing me walking toward him so that we could exchange information. I had previously seen the guy checking the damage with his phone light, but now there was no one in sight.

When he got out, I said, “Are you the guy that hit me?” He said “no” shaking his head but with a seemingly guilty look on his face. I continued to question him because he got out of the car that I thought hit me. He was speaking very little English and said a few things in Spanish. For some reason, it all seemed like an act to me (probably because I am uncultured and am not around non-English speakers very often). I even laughed a bit and said something like “Is this a joke? You’re really going to pretend you don’t understand?”

When I asked if I could look at his car, he said “no” shaking his head withe an expression of certainty. This I think is when I became completely convinced that he was lying and said “why not?” and even walked over to look at it. I didn’t even realize until later on that I looked at the FRONT of his car. He BACKED into me. So obviously it looked fine. This is when some of his friends came down from their apartment and I asked them if he spoke English. They said a little bit and as I talked to them I started to realize I had made a huge mistake. They were all very nice about it (they could speak a bit more English than him) and even started talking to me about some project they were doing and would send me a link about it. I said my apologies and walked away, dumbfounded.

I still don’t know with 100% certainty whether this was the guy that hit me, but now that I’m not in the heat of the moment, it seems doubtful that it was. When in the heat of the moment, all sense of logic and reality goes out the window, apparently. I’m still mortified that I did this, as I never thought this would be the way I would react to this situation. But hindsight is 20/20, I guess. I was so dead set against being tricked out of getting the culprit’s information that I harassed this poor guy and inconvenienced his friend group’s night.

The funny thing is I wasn’t even worried about the car. It’s an old Kia Sorento and my friend would probably never even notice the few extra scratches nor feel the need to do anything if I had the guy’s info. I just thought I might as well get it from him since it wasn’t my car. If I had known it wouldn’t be just a simple exchange and then on with my night, I never would have pursued it even if it WAS the right guy.

I was going to post this on AITA, but then realized in hindsight I am very clearly an asshole in this situation. It seems so surreal when you do something you never thought you were capable of doing.

TLDR: I probably accused the wrong person of hitting my car and to make matters worse I harassed him because I thought he was pretending he couldn’t speak English.