I’m just not budging!
Extraordinary scene shows stress of trying to park in a UK city today
MOTORISTS were caught up in an extraordinary hour-long parking standoff after a man drove down a pavement to wedge his car into a space another driver was trying to park in.
Police were called after both motorists stubbornly refused to move their vehicles, blocking the road.
Pictures from the scene show a black hatchback jammed into a small gap between the other driver’s BMW and the pavement.
The row was sparked by a woman trying to save the parking spot by physically standing in it while her uncle brought their car around.
Father-of-three Khair Mohammed Ghairat, 42, arrived and found the young woman holding the space when he tried to park his BMW 5 Series GT outside his apartment.
She told Mr Ghairat she was saving it for her uncle and refused to move so he could park below his flat in Blackwall Way, Poplar, east
‘It was incredibly dangerous’
London. After a blazing row lasting around 20 minutes she apparently ordered her uncle to back up and drive on the pavement around three other parked cars to snatch the space.
Mr Ghairat’s teenage son, Fyrooz, said: ‘ My dad was telling the woman to “Move please”. He was saying “You can’t save the parking space for anyone – it’s whoever is here first”.
‘The lady was screaming at my dad. She was standing there saying “This is my space”.
The teenager said the woman called her husband who arrived wearing gym gloves.
At this point she apparently ordered her uncle to reverse back up the road and use the pavement to take the space.
‘The lady’s uncle drove over the pavement. He reversed up the road and drove on the pavement and he got one tyre in the spot.
‘My dad quickly reversed and took half of it. The uncle went up on the pavement and half his tyre was in the parking space and the rest of his car was out of it.’ But despite the smaller car being partly on the pavement, Fyrooz said the woman insisted to police her uncle had not driven on the pavement: ‘She wouldn’t admit to the police that they drove on the pavement.’
The photographs were taken by local resident Mark Williamson, 38, who watched the BMW driver mov- ing to park and then saw the other car driving along the pavement, narrowly missing children who were playing there.
‘It was incredibly dangerous, Mr Williamson added. ‘The hatchback driver almost knocked down seven or eight children. I couldn’t believe it… where children were playing’. Both drivers and their passengers got out of their cars, joining in a heated row that prompted calls to the police when neither had budged more than 30 minutes later.
Mr Williamson added: ‘She was absolutely irate at the thought she might not get the space. If the police had come five minutes later I think there would have been a fight.’
Eventually officers forced both the BMW and the hatchback driver to move their cars, briefly leaving the space free. Within moments a white saloon car had pulled in to claim the disputed bay. The Metropolitan Police confirmed that officers had been called to the area over a ‘civil dispute’. A spokesman said: ‘Officers attended a disturbance over a parking space on Friday evening. Both parties were advised and they left the scene.’