Central Texas Park Worker Fired Over Screaming Tirade

GEORGETOWN, TEXAS — It's often disconcerting to make a wrong turn into unfamiliar terrain when driving. Yet it's more unsettling when one makes a wrong turn only to have a screaming woman emerge, position herself in front of the vehicle while claiming she's been run over even while the car is idled, and holding onto the hood of the car to prevent the driver from leaving.

That sort of thing is beyond disconcerting, moving more into the realm of horrifying.

Yet that's the scenario recently played out at a Georgetown, Texas, park where local resident Chris Hampshire took a wrong turn. He recorded the encounter on video on the outskirts of Austin, showing the park's gate attendant near Lake Georgetown preventing him from correcting his inadvertent detour.

"This is what happens when you steer down the wrong exit at Lake Georgetown," Hampshire described in a Facebook post with the same palpable calmness he exhibited during the encounter. "Corrected myself immediately when I saw the sign, backed up and was going out the right exit. This park attendant happened to be outside, and told me she was calling the cops over that."

The matter-of-fact recounting is a far cry from the reaction of the attendant, whose outburst yielded a screaming rebuke to the concept of grace under pressure with a dramatic performance that would make even Meryl Streep envious.

"Some guy in a car, and now he's videotaping me," the cell-phone-clutching gate attendant says after dialing police. "Ma'am he's running me over! Ma'am, please hurry! He's a lunatic, and his videotaping me! Please hurry! Mike! Mike! Mike! MIIIIIIKE!!!" she then screams to someone in the guardhouse, presumably a colleague positioned outside of camera view.

To protect himself against the woman's accusations of being run over, Hampshire started recording the confrontation after making the wrong turn into the Cedar Breaks Park in Georgetown. The seemingly interminable-yet-only-two-minute video snippet has now traveled far and wide like those tumbleweeds one often sees across the landscape of this largely rural Central Texas town where the driver lived out his motoring nightmare.

At last check, the video garnered the full range of human emotion as represented by social media icons — from thumbs up to uproarious laughter to that yellow-faced visage representing abject horror with pursed lips and widened eyes. Stated another way: 6,600 reactions, 5,300 comments and 11,000 shares.

Finally telling the park rangers (including the elusive Mike who never made an appearance in this real-life drama) lacked the authority to detain him, Hampshire drove off, only to be pulled over a mile or so, as the crow flies, from the park. Following their onsite and impromptu investigation that included viewing of the cell phone footage, the man was allowed to drive off without charges. A subsequent, fuller investigation revealed the woman sustained no injuries and the vehicle was free of damage.

Things didn't go as well for the Meryl Streep of the Texas Hill Country, however. The woman, who has since been identified as Judine Reed, was reportedly fired from her job as park gate attendant. Police said she declined medical attention and provided no written statement about the incident.

The hapless protagonist of the video clip uploaded the video on Sept. 11, more than two weeks after his ordeal.

Park overseers at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released the following statement on Wednesday: "We neither condone nor support this sort of behavior by our employees or contractors. The incident occurred on Aug. 25 and the gate attendant is no longer at the park or providing contracted gate attendant duties at any of our lakes. Our goal is to offer a pleasant and safe recreation experience for all our guests."

Indeed, Cedar Breaks Park is a bucolic spot situated some 25 miles north of Austin — and a mere nine miles north of Round Rock, 17.5 miles northeast of Cedar Park — with the centerpiece Lake Georgetown on the north fork of the San Gabriel River, with a name alluding to the abundance of cedar in the surrounding forest. Boating is a popular pastime here, and the fishing is outstanding with a lake containing black bass, white bass, hybrid stripers, white crappie, channel catfish, flatbed catfish and an abundance of smallmouth bass. The 26-mile San Gabriel River Trail offers a lovely, meandering path amid a dense juniper forest, bottomlands and prairie grassland. Small game such as dove, waterfowl, rabbit, squirrel and white-tail deer offer a hunters' bounty.

We end with such vivid description not in tangential fashion, but to remind would-be visitors of this idyllic Texas Hill Country setting despite the potential screaming of gate attendants. So y'all come back now, you hear! But take a wrong turn, and you're on your own.

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