Just to add a bit: according to witnesses, he was driving the wrong way down a one-way street on which there was a street festival, vocalizing threats to pedestrians who wouldn't get out of his way, actually grazing one of them, with his car periodically leaving the street and jumping onto the sidewalk, at one point menacing a food stand on the sidewalk.

His mother, in the car with him at the time, indicates that they were driving the wrong way down the street on purpose: frustrated by the street closures from the ongoing festival, they got to within visual range of their destination (a garage where their belongings were) and opted to ignore the street signs to get there.

Photos of him post-arrest show visible injuries to his face. That wasn't the police: his driving menaced some young children (apparently near the food stand) so frightening their father that he ran after the car and decked the driver. It was at that point that the driver fled the scene.

Seven year is a crazy high sentence; much too long. But using a moving car to forcibly coerce people out of your way isn't a simple moving violation: it is, and should be, a felony.