That’s what 48-year-old Cynthia Strong of Bellevue told 32-year-old Tara Underwood after Underwood drove the wrong way while looking for a parking spot at the Cool Springs Galleria. Read the entire incident at ThatIsMessedUp complete with 911 audio.
Strong faces a maximum sentence of 11 months and 29 days in jail, though she has no previous record. She is due back in court on December 20.
“She was furious,” said Underwood. “If my five-year-old had been back here he would have been terrified. She is banging on the window freaking out. I am afraid she is going to break the window out. She started yelling at me screaming nasty, ugly expletives at me. She totally threatened me, a lot.”
[Road Rage Turns Violent In Cool Springs' Lot - WKRN - 12-10-07]“I at no time did i utter a curse word at underwood before exiting my car. i did comment after she started her holiday cheer lecture and how someone else had taken her parking spot that i thought perhaps she was illterate since she was going the wrong way. i then proceeded to roll up my window when she called me a bitch. at that point, i parked my car and confronted her. when she stated she couldn’t hear me, i reached in her car window, snatcher her ear buds out of her ear and asked could she hear me now?!?!?”
[Cynthia Strong - December 10, 2007 @ 11:47 pm ]“I actually thought she was rolling her window down to offer me her space that she had just left because it was a little further up from me. She is so deranged that she is actually DEFENDING her position. Maybe Ms. Strong is the one who is “not so bright here”. If she had displayed an ounce of self control or sense; she would have never come up to my car and verbally and physically attacked me. She had NO IDEA that my little innocent son was not in that car behind those tinted windows; NOR DID SHE CARE.”
[Tara Underwood - December 11, 2007 @ 1:20 am ]
I had a similar experience. I was driving the wrong way down a one-way street in my Hummer, trying to steal a parking space before someone else could get to it. I had my iPod headphones on and was completely oblivious to everything around me, which of course didn’t concern me because I just didn’t give a damn about anybody or anything other than myself. Suddenly someone was knocking on my window and calling me an inconsiderate *#%@! He had NO IDEA that I didn’t have a troop of Brownie Scouts in my car. (I didn’t, but the fact that I COULD HAVE gives me moral superiority.) The nerve of that guy! I wish I had pressed charges.
While Ms Underwood obviously needs to understand why arrows point the way they do in parking lots (she certainly cannot defend her “the world revolves around me and must bend to my wishes” position), Ms Strong never should have laid a hand on her.
My tip to those who have Ms Underwoods in their lives they have to deal with: just remember they have to live with themselves.