All felony aggravated assault charges have been dropped against Dr. Bruce L. Mitchell, the Ponte Vedra Beach physician arrested last month following a road rage incident involving gunfire and a group of local high school students, The Citizen has learned.
The raps were tossed on June 6, court papers show.
The doctor still faces a felony charge of discharging a firearm from a vehicle and a misdemeanor count of improper display of a firearm.
Mitchell, 67, a former Mayo Clinic doctor and resident of Sawgrass, had faced multiple serious charges stemming from a confrontation on A1A in which he was accused of tailing and firing a gun near a car carrying five teenage athletes from Jacksonville.
The teens had been throwing cheese out of their vehicle as a prank near Ponte Vedra Boulevard and Sawgrass Drive, according to an arrest report.
Mitchell, driving a black Range Rover, allegedly pursued them aggressively, swerving between lanes and firing a pistol into the air.
While Mitchell had initially claimed the teens “shot at me first,” investigators later found no weapons in their vehicle and no physical evidence of a shot fired at him.
Mitchell is being represented by prominent Jacksonville defense attorney Brian Coughlin of the Bedell Firm, the son of former Jaguars coach Tom Coughlin.
Coughlin has declined to comment on the case.
A longtime figure in the medical community, Mitchell previously led the Hospital Medicine program at Emory University and spent over a decade at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville before departing in 2009.
