A Dallas bartender was taken into police custody on Wednesday after assaulting a young, Black woman over what seems to be a parking dispute.
Thirty-year-old Austin Shuffield can be seen on video punching the woman, who ABC local affiliate WFAA identified as 24-year-old L’Daijohnique Lee. Based on Lee’s account, the altercation happened after Lee drove the opposite way down a one-way street.
“I knew I was on a one-way street but I was stopping literally at the corner to let my friend out,” Lee told WFAA.
Shuffield asked Lee to move her car because it was blocking him in, and according to a police report obtained by the news station, after Lee did so, Shuffield approached the car to take a photo of the license plate. That’s when Lee told Shuffield, who was brandishing a gun, to step back or get maced.
Lee says she called 911 because she feared for her life.
“I got scared, I was like ‘you have a gun?’ The first thing I thought to do was call the police,” she said.
The footage caught on eyewitness Ricky Tan’s cellphone video shows Shuffield slapping the phone out of Lee’s hands to the ground. Once Lee retaliates with a punch, Shuffield begins punching her repeatedly in the face and upper-body area.
“He charged at me, and he just kept hitting me, and I was like ‘ok, ok, ok’,” Lee told reporters.
Lee sustained minor injuries to her face but is still reeling from the emotional trauma she sustained.
“Watching that video literally makes me cry. All I could do was try and protect myself,” she said. “He literally sat there and beat me like a man.”