A Waymo self-driving car briefly blocked an ambulance responding to a fatal shooting on Austin’s Sixth Street over the weekend.
Video captured the autonomous vehicle stopped sideways in the road as the ambulance approached with flashing lights following Sunday’s early morning shooting that killed three people, including the gunman, and injured 14 others.
An Austin police officer pulled up, exited the patrol car, and entered the Waymo to move it. The footage, posted to TikTok by Matthew Turnage, shows the sequence during the chaotic response.
Waymo said a rider had hailed the car for a pickup after the shooting. As it neared the spot, the vehicle “identified a road blockage and began executing a U-turn,” Fox 7 Austin reported.
When another ambulance appeared mid-turn, the car “briefly yielded and was assisted by a nearby officer.”
“While the Waymo Driver operates in dense U.S. cities, smoothly navigating interactions with emergency vehicles (EVs) at all hours, we are dedicated to learning from this situation and how we show up for our community as we continue improving road safety in the cities we serve,” a Waymo representative said in an email to Fox 7.
Austin-Travis County EMS Chief Robert Luckritz addressed the video at a Monday news conference alongside Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis.
“[ATCEMS], as well as our fellow public safety partners, work very closely with the autonomous vehicle vendors that operate here in the city of Austin,” Luckritz said. “We had more than 20 assets, resources that responded to this event. As stated at an earlier press conference, we were on scene within 57 seconds. So in the grand scheme of the impact on the overall incident, we don’t believe it had any impact on patient outcomes.”
Luckritz said EMS has contacted Waymo to discuss concerns and address future responses.
The shooting began around 1:40 a.m. Sunday outside Buford’s bar in the Sixth Street entertainment district. Authorities said it may have terrorism ties.
Officers confronted 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Senegal living in Pflugerville, and killed him after he fired at them, Davis said.
Diagne wore a sweatshirt reading “Property of Allah” and a T-shirt with an Iranian flag underneath. He was not previously known to local or federal law enforcement. Diagne reportedly drove by the bar, fired a pistol out the window, parked nearby, and exited with a rifle. He held two legally purchased weapons from 2017; he never entered the bar.
Investigators found concerning items in his vehicle, prompting an explosives team response, but no bombs were discovered.
One critically injured person is expected to be taken off life support, while two others remained in critical condition on Monday, Austin police said.