A 26-year-old Marietta man is accused of standing in the median of Cobb Parkway and hurling a rock that dented a stranger's car door as she drove past near Cobb EMC headquarters last Friday morning. Tyler Wayne Ringl was arrested days later and now faces a criminal trespass damage charge, even as he denies throwing anything at all.
According to the Marietta Daily Journal, the incident happened around 10:13 a.m. last Friday as the victim drove north on Cobb Parkway near 1100 EMC Parkway NE. Police say a rock struck the driver's side door, and officers later documented two dents in the metal. A witness reportedly captured video of Ringl approaching the driver afterward, and police say Ringl noticed the witness taking his picture during the encounter.
Ringl was arrested Saturday and booked into the Cobb County Adult Detention Center, per jail records cited by the same outlet. He reportedly admitted to police that he had been standing in the median at the time, but he has denied throwing anything at the victim's vehicle, according to the report. The Cobb County Police Department issued the arrest warrant that led to his booking on the criminal trespass damage charge.
Bond Set at $5,000 as Case Moves Forward
Ringl remains in custody on a $5,000 bond, the newspaper's report notes. Under Georgia Code § 16-7-21, criminal trespass covering intentional property damage of $500 or less is a misdemeanor, carrying a maximum penalty of up to 12 months in jail and a $1,000 fine, according to FindLaw.
That is the charge Ringl currently faces, but Georgia law gives prosecutors room to pursue something far more serious if they determine the incident amounted to more than property damage. Under Georgia Code § 16-11-37, intentionally throwing an object at an occupied vehicle can be charged as a terroristic act, a felony punishable by 1 to 10 years in prison, according to Justia Law. Georgia Code § 16-5-21 goes further still, defining aggravated assault as an attack with an object capable of causing serious bodily injury, which carries a sentence of 1 to 20 years when directed at an occupied motor vehicle. Whether prosecutors will seek to elevate the charge, and what value investigators ultimately place on the vehicle damage, remain open questions in the case.
A Familiar Face in the Cobb County Justice System
Court records show Ringl was listed on a Cobb County Superior Court probation revocation calendar this past June, tied to a criminal case originally filed in December 2023. Public booking logs tracked by local records aggregators, including The Georgia Gazette, also show Ringl booked into the Cobb County Adult Detention Center previously, including arrests recorded in October 2025 and this past May. The Cobb County Sheriff's Office operates the detention facility at 1825 County Services Parkway in Marietta, which serves as the central booking and pretrial holding site for law enforcement agencies across the county.
Roadside object-throwing is not new to the area. In September 2018, Cobb County law enforcement arrested a man accused of throwing objects at moving vehicles on the Northwest Corridor Express Lanes over a five-hour stretch, charging him with criminal trespass and reckless conduct. Cobb Parkway itself, a heavily trafficked commercial corridor also known as U.S. Route 41, is watched by a network of more than 950 Georgia DOT and Cobb County traffic cameras, according to TrafficVision.Live.
Latest in a String of Roadway Incidents
The corridor has seen its share of trouble this year. In March, a suspected DUI pickup driver struck an occupied Marietta City Schools bus on Cobb Parkway, injuring two children and snarling traffic for hours, as Cobb Parkway school bus crash coverage detailed. That same month, Marietta police responding to a commercial trespass call at a Bojangles along the strip discovered an illegally modified fully automatic Glock and packaged drugs on a suspect. Just last week, a Lyft passenger in Marietta was accused of groping her driver and attempting to bribe responding officers, another episode in what has become a steady stream of police calls tied to driver safety and public disturbances near this stretch of Cobb Parkway.
