Posted on 08/04/2005 1:41:46 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
A woman is bumped by a car a week after a fatal shooting. AAA advises not holding a spot by standing in it.
Gerry Milot, 70, couldn't find a handicap space at the crowded Wal-Mart on Missouri Avenue in Largo. So his wife, June, 66, staked out a spot, standing in it until he could move their car over.
But Henry Gawlik also wanted the coveted space. So he bumped June Milot out of the way with his Cadillac, police said.
Gawlik, 81, was arrested on charges of aggravated battery with a vehicle and battery for hitting Gerry Milot after an argument.
While June Milot was unhurt in Monday's incident, other parking-lot rage incidents have turned deadly. Last week, St. Petersburg police said an argument over a parking spot outside a popular nightclub led to the shooting death of a 17-year-old Boca Ciega High School student.
At a time when mall parking lots are jammed and a hike to the entrance might be considered serious exercise, some people are getting dangerously testy.
Most agree parking space protocol is first-come, first-served. But what happens when someone steals your space, or when someone tries to reserve a space for a car that has yet to arrive?
Tempers flare. Middle fingers are extended. Drivers yell profanities and blast their horns. Others key cars and slash tires.
No one knows how bad the problem is. It's not like you can charge someone who zips in front of you with theft of a parking space. But turf battles over prime spots near store entrances are becoming more common, experts say.
Just because there are no laws governing parking lots "doesn't exempt you from the rest of the socially agreed-upon rules," said University of South Florida professor Carlos Zalaquett.
As a rule-of-thumb, "you will not try to take out an older adult," said Zalaquett, assistant professor in the community mental health counseling program.
Certain times of the year tend to bring out the worst in parking lot rage, said Largo police Deputy Chief John Carroll.
"When it's really hot out or during the holiday season when malls are full, people who want to find the best parking spot tend to aggravate each other in the parking lot," he said.
On Wednesday, drivers navigating the congested Wal-Mart parking lot in Largo waited for a space to open up. Others stalked shoppers leaving the store, following them to their parking spots. But no one stood in the middle of a space.
Carol Davison, 58, Clearwater, parked far away from the entrance.
"You say aggressive, I say plain nasty," she said of other drivers. "I hate coming to this store."
She wants to avoid re-creating an incident at a Publix where she watched as a driver rammed a shopping cart into another car to get into a parking space.
Cindy Parker, who was walking to her car in a parking lot in front of a St. Petersburg Publix on Wednesday, said she once saw someone try to save a parking spot by standing in it.
"I think it's ridiculous," she said. "To me there's no sense in fighting over a parking space because you just go around the corner and find another."
AAA Auto Club South's Yoli Buss advises against standing in a parking space to reserve it.
"That could be dangerous," said Buss, director of driver improvement programs. "We don't know who the person is behind the wheel."
St. Petersburg resident Pat Hardin, a victim of parking injustice, said she was aghast to hear that a man had bumped a woman with a car over a parking spot.
Once, Hardin was in her car, waiting for someone to back out of a parking space she had staked out. Her blinker was on to signal she had claimed the spot. But then another car zoomed in.
"It made me mad," she said, but she would never have fought with the other driver over it.
Once a person gets behind the wheel, he or she becomes more aggressive, Zalaquett said. A driver nabs your space - who does he think he is?
"The person goes into a spiral of angriness," he said. "He or she starts acting in a way he may not have reacted if he stopped and (rethought) this situation."
Carroll, the Largo deputy police chief, has a solution to parking-lot rage.
"Everybody wants to have that front parking spot," he says, "when we would all benefit from more exercise."
Times staff writers Emily Anthes and Alex Leary and researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report.
[Last modified August 4, 2005, 01:18
And some wonder why returning vets have trouble adjusting to ordinary life back in the world.
Between the heat, idiotic drivers and overcrowded parking lots (as NOBODY in Florida walks), its amazing that there aren't more road rage incidents in that state. I speak as someone who used to ride the Palmetto Expressway on a regular basis and once got into an altercation (the other guy started it) in a Publix parking lot with a seasoned citizen.
Those nutty oldsters.
I learned to drive in St. Petersburg. Between rubber necking tourists and the elderly, I sure learned to drive defensively.
We have a local WalMart where you have to park a couple city blocks away because the parking lot is so large and so full.
I just avoid a store like that. If I need to go to WalMart, I go to a less crowded one, early in the AM, say between 5 and 7 AM since I'm up anyway (our WalMarts are 24 hour stores.)
Besides with the heat at 95 and the heat index on hot asphalt probably way over 100, who needs to be fighting that kind of heat in the middle of the day.
WTF? Is there a Mall Parking 101?
As Smedly Widebum writes in his masterful doctoral thesis, "If you can not intimidate a suburban matron out of a parking space, maybe mall shopping isn't your sport."
Parking experts! Snort!
Seriously though, I do like the part about the 81 yo and the 70 yo duking it out in the parking lot!
LOL
I'm giving you a wide berth.
Sometimes people simply stand in the middle of the parking spaces yakking and could care a less whether someone's waiting for it.
Standing in a parking space seems like a bad idea period. It's not a standing space, its a parking lot.
That being said, you don't run over someone standing in it. You do expect them to move if you start to pull into it.
I do the same thing (for the same reason) and don't mind the extra walk at all.
what do you expect from idiots who cant punch a hole in ballot .They have to much time on their hands
Ditto.
I leave the closest spaces for the elderly and the crippled. A little walking does me good.
That's the truth!
Anchorman is weighed off after car park altercation (Shepherd Smith of Fox)
News/Current Events News Keywords: SHEPHERD SMITH ARRESTED
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
Published: 11-20-00 Author: Toby Harnden
Posted on 11/20/2000 21:17:37 PST by MCH
THE battle for Florida votes between the two presidential contenders has been nothing compared to the intense competition between television reporters. A dispute over a parking space in Tallahassee, the state capital, has seen a leading network journalist arrested and taken to jail.
Fox News, the first television network to announce prematurely that George W Bush had been elected president, suffered further embarrassment over the weekend when Shepherd Smith, 36, was involved in an ugly altercation with a female rival.
With his Friday afternoon live broadcast due within a few minutes, Smith was trying to park outside Tallahassee's Capitol building when he spotted a rare space. Camera equipment and a traffic cone had been placed there but he leapt out and removed it. The space was being watched by Maureen Walsh, 39, a reporter with a local station, while her camera crew went to order lunch. Seeing it about to be taken she rushed over and stood in Smith's way.
According to Sergeant Edwin Maxwell of the Capitol Police, Smith swore at Walsh and then "hit the gas", driving into the space and knocking her onto his bonnet. He said: "She was thrown onto the hood of the car and ended up on the ground. Smith then parked the car, turned off the engine, and walked across the street to get on the air with Fox."
The police were called and tracked down Smith while he was live on national television giving an account of the latest legal twists in the presidential race. They waited patiently until he had handed back to the studio before arresting him. He was then handcuffed and taken into Leon County jail. Walsh went to hospital suffering from bruised legs but was able to return to the Capitol and continue broadcasting.
Meanwhile, Smith was negotiating being freed on $10,000 (£6,250) bail while Fox hastily arranged to anchor their evening show from New York instead of Florida. He faces up to 15 years in prison if found guilty of a felony charge of aggravated battery with a motor vehicle.
I have never been to a store, mall, arena, airport etc. where there were not at least 30 handicapped parking spots available.
That's my game plan. I hate door dings. I park as far away in the lot as possible. No drivers 'stalking' spots out in the boonies.
I wonder how that was resolved.
What a T.V. "personality" he is.
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