SALT LAKE CITY — The owner of the “Totally Awesome” computer retail chain was charged Tuesday with reckless driving in his black Jaguar and brandishing a gun at neighbors who stopped him.

Dell Buck Schanze was carrying a 10-mm Glock handgun seized by police but denied having waved it at residents in the confrontation on May 21.

Police said Schanze aimed the gun at one neighbor who grabbed a rock and threatened to break a taillight on his car. Schanze was stopped by residents who said he was driving 50-100 mph on Steep Mountain Drive in Draper.

“OK, so these road ragers — crazy dudes — come chasing at me. They block off my vehicle. One guy picks up a huge rock. Absolutely I’m going to defend myself,” the 35-year-old Schanze told Salt Lake television station KUTV.

“They come at me threatening and yelling, like steam coming out of their ears,” said Schanze, whose 8-year-old daughter was in the car.

The three men retreated and called police, who found Schanze still in the neighborhood arguing with other residents when they arrived, Draper police Sgt. Gerry Allred said Tuesday.

The Salt Lake County district attorney’s office filed charges Tuesday against Schanze of making a threat with a dangerous weapon, a class A misdemeanor, and reckless driving, a class B misdemeanor. A court issued Schanze a summons to show up for a non-jail booking.

Schanze holds a permit to carry a concealed weapon, Allred said.

Schanze appears frequently in his own TV ads as a crazed pitchman and is a regular at the Point of the Mountain, where hang gliders set off from a steep hill to catch prevailing winds. In June 2003 he survived one 75-foot plunge in high winds. His emergency parachute deployed, but his craft dragged him across a field.

He walked away from that mishap, but on Tuesday said he was “handicapped” by an assortment of injuries, including a broken hip and wrist and a back problem that required 11 vertebra to be fused together.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D2.

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