Can my father get life for hitting someone who ran over child playing on the road?

Any help on this matter would be nice. My father is a disabled man that is looking at life in prison for standing up to some young punk that about ran over a child playing on his road. The guy driving the car/truck is known in that area to drive fast and reckless all the time. The day this took place he was driving too fast down the road. He lived on same as my dad, when he almost hit a young child playing. My father walked over to him yelling telling him that he needed to watch out an slow down because of the children playing in that neighbourhood. Words were passed back and forth then my father struck the guy in the face with an open palm slap. The guy told him he would let that slide that time and that was all that was said. My father then went with his girlfriend at the time to look for a new place to live. He got a call saying that the police was there looking for him and that he didn’t need to return. He told the person that called him that he wasn’t going to hide. He was proud of what he did because no one would stand up to this young man about how he drove in the neighborhood. He had also told them that he was coming because it was just a little assault charge and they would take it easy on him. Well that’s not the case. The young guy my father struck happened to be a nephew of a cop officer. When dad showed back up, he saw two officers. He walked over to Bailey and told him that he was the man they were looking for. He asked if he had an ID, my father told him that he didn’t because of being disabled. He has seizers so they took his ability to drive. He then placed handcuffs on my father and started to talk to him when an officer came up yelling at my father that he messed up and the guy he hit was his nephew. He told my father that he was going to pay for what he did. By this time, the officer is in my father’s face yelling at him and my father is standing there. He then strikes my father in the mouth.