July 4th Parking Lot Rage

Occurred on July 4, 2024 / Austin, Texas, USA

Info from Licensor: "My partner and I went to Zilker park (Austin, TX) to celebrate July 4th and see the annual fireworks display. We did the same thing a year ago in 2023 and learned the hard way that the traffic is crazy. We left about halfway through the show in an attempt to avoid some of the exit traffic but alas we didn't leave soon enough.

The traffic was gridlocked in the parking lot when we pulled out of our space. We accepted the fact that we failed to leave the park early enough and would be stuck in the same mess as last year. At this point the fireworks show ended and there was a rush of people heading towards their cars in the lot. In our gridlocked position we watched the headlights of cars light up as their engines roared to life to our left and right along the lane.

We watched a group of people load into the vehicle to our left. They started up their car and aggressively edged towards our vehicle. We were in a position to either let them in or pass. There was a whole line of cars already queued up behind us and we had already been waiting at a standstill for about 5 minutes.

I didn't get a recording of this but a male passenger exited their vehicle and walked up to the driver side window of our car. He stared down my boyfriend through the window with his face inches from the glass and in a clear attempt to be intimidating he demanded that we let his vehicle in front of us. Due to their behavior our decision was made. We would not let them in front of our vehicle.

Once it was clear that we had no intentions of letting them in front of us, one of their passengers got out of the passenger seat and approached our vehicle again. She threatened me and my boyfriend. She came around to the passenger side of my vehicle and tried the door handle while telling me I would get beat up. She banged on the glass hard enough that I was genuinely worried that she would crack it.

The other passengers of the vehicle managed to wrestle her back into her seat, but she got out and banged on my window two more times, and each time got wrestled back into her car again."