TEMPE, Ariz. — Yuki Martinez has two babies-- one is her 3-year-old daughter and the other is her car.
She’s spent countless hours fixing it up, even installing an air suspension that is controlled from an app on her phone.
“It’s pretty nice,” she said after making her car lift. “I love her.”
Martinez considers herself a car enthusiast. Although she hasn’t given her car a name yet, she enjoys taking it to "meet-ups" to show it off to other car lovers.
On Saturday, she was one of the thousand people that gathered at a private parking garage near Tempe Marketplace, where about 500 cars showed up, Tempe police said.
“We were walking around, we got hot dogs with our friends, my kid was going around the vendors getting stickers and awesome stuff like that,” she said.
Videos from the gathering show attendees even doing "foot races," where people run and race each other.
“Big meets like that are so much fun,” Martinez said. “It’s just a bunch of people hanging out, just absolutely having fun, and then one person can just ruin it all for everyone."
“One person can just ruin it all for everyone"
Tempe police said one of their officers stumbled upon the large gathering around 8 p.m. that was happening at a parking structure near Loop 101 and 202.
The event was peaceful up until the end, when “the people who do street takeovers came and messed it all up for us.”
Authorities said they monitored the event and contacted the Phoenix Police Street Racing Task Force which handles side-by-side racing, and street and parking lot takeovers.
“We started to shut it down because they started participating in donuts and reckless activities with the cars,” said Lieutenant Tony Miller who was on the scene.
Officers detained the organizer of the event after shutting it down. A post-Miranda interview recorded on a body-worn-camera went like this:
Officer: What did you see them doing tonight at your event?
Organizer: They were trying to be crazy and that’s why I pulled my car out and I tried to stop it.
Officer: Can you describe how were they driving? What they were doing?
Organizer: Trying to do donuts as they were leaving.
The organizer and four other people were given criminal citations.
In the recorded interview with officers, the organizer admits to not having a permit for the event and said he promoted it on social media and invited people to gather at that location because he “was just trying to keep people away from the takeovers.”
Since there was no permit the event was an illegal takeover of the building, the police said.
Car enthusiasts denounce street stunt drivers
Martinez and her friends, who were also at the event, said the majority of the people gathered that night were car enthusiasts and not street "stunters."
“For us, takeovers is when people with loud, fast cars come in and start drifting and doing donuts, so to us [the car community] it wasn’t a takeover,” said Natalie Benefield. “I guess I could see how the police would see it as that.”
Both Benefield and Martinez said they do not condone the street takeovers and stunts and said it’s not a representation of all car lovers.
“Anyone who was there don’t really associate themselves with people who do takeovers,” Martinez said. “When it gets out of hand like that, it ruins the fun for everyone.”
Up to Speed