
Chaos as a man drives into a crowd at a SXSW event.
Austin, Texas, is the center of the world right now. We’re in the midst of the massive South By Southwest Festival, which brings music, art, technology, and more together to discuss the latest trends in their industry, listen to the hottest bands both signed and unsigned, and generally just have a whole lot of fun in the capital of Texas. This brings in big crowds as fans stream into the city to partake of all the fun events, free everything, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Unfortunately for some of those people, SXSW was a life-ending event after a horrible accident. A driver drove into a crowd of people at South By Southwest killing two and injuring 23.
The driver of the vehicle had dodged a DUI patrol, weaved through parked cars, went the wrong way down a one-way street, and was fleeing from police when he turned right onto Red River Street, which was blocked off for SXSW events. After nearly running over the cop manning the barricade, the driver rammed into a crowd of people in front of The Mohawk, which has been hosting Spin events for SXSW. He also hit and killed two people on a moped and crashed into a taxi before bailing out of the silver Toyota he was driving and attempting to make an escape; police apprehended him, but the damage was already done.
“We had a large crowd. I just thank God that a lot of the folks had already been pushed on the sidewalk or this could have been a lot worse,” said Austin police chief Art Acevedo, who added that the festival will go on as planned. “We do these events very well, but you cannot stop a person who rather than face drunk driving charges decides to speed at a high rate of speed, go around a uniformed officer forcing him to run out of the way, then at a high rate of speed show total disregard for the sanctity of human life.”
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