Craziness

I got a call from a friend of mine yesterday while I was driving home from work. I hadn't talked to him in a while so we did some catching up and then he told me that he'd just had the worst week of his life. I asked why and he told me that he had been arrested and spent a night in jail. Now, this is a mild-mannered dude so I was pretty shocked. However, knowing what he had been going through with his wife I knew it had something to do with her. He is in the process of filing for divorce and hasn't been living in their home for the past few months. She is a raging lunatic and has been putting him through hell whichever way she can.
I asked him what she did and he proceeded to tell me what happened:

He stopped at the house to pick up some clothes. He also needed to charge his phone as well as see his daughter. He plugged his phone in and went into another room to play with the baby. His wife picks up his phone and starts to go through it, reading all his text messages. She sees some that she doesn't think are appropriate and loses her shit. She gets all in his face, starts hitting him in his back, screaming, yelling, etc. This is pretty much how all their fights go. He'll eventually just leave the house until she calms down. But this time he tried to tell her that she shouldn't have been going through his shit, that what he does while they are separated is none of her business, yada yada.
The baby is sitting on the floor watching all this go on asking her Daddy not to yell. He told me that T (his wife) frequently argued with no regard to whether the baby witnessed it or not. So she's going on and on and my friend is trying to pick the baby up so he can take her and leave until T calms down. He's talking to the baby saying "It's ok, Daddy loves you. We're gonna leave in a minute" etc. T tries to grab the baby and says "This muthafucka don't love you! He don't care about you! Don't put your hands on my daughter!" Now mind you, the baby is only 2 years old. She don't really understand all this. So for T to go there was clearly in an effort to make dude mad.
So, upon hearing her say that to his daughter about him, he proceeds to lose his own shit. He grabs hold of her neck, lifts her up in the air and shakes her telling her not to ever say no shit like that to his daughter about him. He then drops her on the floor. She gets up with the quickness and calls the police. The police come, put him in cuffs and take him out to the car. They get her side of the story, go out and get his side of the story and then tell him they have to place him under arrest.
While my friend is in jail, T presses charges and gets a restraining order against him and his parents. His parents are the main ones who babysat while they worked during the day and are definitely not a threat to the child so I didn't see her reasoning for this. But anyway...
My friend tells me that when he got out of jail, he and his parents went back to the house to try and get his truck so he could go to work. The police were called to oversee all this. T wouldn't give the truck back. Her reason: Simply because she didn't want him to have it. She said let him find another way to try to get to work. His parents tried to reason with her. She cussed them out. She has her own truck. No reason to try to keep his. But that's just how she is.
While I'm talking to my friend I can tell in his voice how angry he is that shit got this far. He now has a misdemeanor on his record and has to take anger management classes. He said he has never put his hands on a woman and doesn't know what came over him. He said he hasn't seen his baby in days and starts to cry. He told me that all he wants is his baby. He said she can have the house, all their cars, everything...he just wants his daughter.
He also told me that he's been talking to her family trying to plead his case. Her own family said they knew that this would happen eventually because T is nuts. Her father said he was disappointed in him but told him that he can't say he wouldn't have done the same thing.
Needless to say, I was in complete shock about the whole situation. No way should he have ever put his hands on her but I lightweight think she deserved it. LOL! I'm terrible...but damn! How far do you push a man...how many buttons do you press trying to get a rise out of him before he snaps? I have never understood why chicks do crazy shit like that.

What's your take on this?