A driverless car blocked first responders from rushing to attend to victims involved in the Austin terror attack that left three dead and 14 others injured.
Footage shared online captured the moment a Waymo robotaxi stalled in the middle of the street while an ambulance tried to speed over to Buford's bar after shots rang out around 2am Sunday.
The car was called to pick up Matthew Turnage and his friends after a night out, he said.
‘We left a club at 2 a.m. and were walking to get a ride home. We just so happened to get a Waymo car from Uber and when we found the car, it was trying to pick us up but got stuck in the middle of the street and blocked emergency vehicles for a couple of minutes,’ Turnage, who recorded the clip, told KXAN.
Once it was clear the car was in the way of the ambulance, several people were heard yelling at the driverless vehicle to get out of the way as it drove forward and backward, appearing confused.
A police officer then arrived and made his way into the vehicle while the ambulance backed up and took another route to get to the scene.
The clip ended with the cop in the driver's seat, but he didn't appear to get the car to move out of the road.
Paramedics made it to the scene in under a minute after the gunman, Ndiaga Diagne, 53, opened fire outside the packed bar and killed Ryder Harrington, 19, Savitha Shan, 24, and another unidentified victim.
A video posted online showed the moment a Waymo robotaxi blocked an ambulance that was on its way to attending to victims involved in the deadly terror attack shooting in Austin, Texas on Sunday morning.
The ambulance was seen coming to a stop before it quickly backed up and took a different route to Buford's bar.
After the shooting, Rob Lukritz, the chief of Austin Travis EMS, said the incident with the Waymo car did not slow down response to the scene, which saw paramedics get there in 57 seconds.
‘In the grand scheme of the impact on the overall incident we don’t believe it had any impact on patient outcomes,’ Lukritz said.
‘I will say we’re already in touch with Waymo to give them our concerns and to work with them to address this moving forward.’
A Waymo spokesperson told the Daily Mail that just before the ambulance appeared, the car 'identified a road blockage and began executing a U-turn.'
'While the Waymo Driver operates in dense U.S. cities, smoothly navigating interactions with emergency vehicles 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,' they added.
Although the matter was resolved in a matter of seconds, the occurrence left many uneasy and upset.
'Waymo needs to be banned. Stuff like this cannot happen,' an X user wrote.
Another posted: 'If a human driver did this, the driver would held criminally responsible.'
'But in a world delegated to robots and AI, who will be held responsible to the same level of criminality? Or will we just abandon the concept of responsibility?'
'They need to be banned... This is unacceptable,' someone else commented.
The autonomous cars first came to Austin in 2024 to provide another option for locals and tourists to get around other than typical ride share and public transportation.
Waymo fleets are also located in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, Houston, Orlando, and the Metro Phoenix area.
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said Diagne never entered the bar, but fired at patrons from the street with a handgun and a rifle until cops shot him dead.
He is believed to have been fixated on revenge for the deadly US attacks on Iran that began early Saturday morning, officials said.
Diagne, a former New York City resident and US citizen who immigrated from Senegal, was wearing shirt reading 'Property of Allah' and an undershirt or T-shirt emblazoned with the Iranian flag.
The gunman, Ndiaga Diagne, 53, opened fire outside the packed bar before dying from police gunfire. He is believed to have been fixated on revenge for the deadly US attacks on Iran that began early Saturday morning.
A memorial is seen outside the bar where three were killed and 14 others were injured.
After shooting at people on the bar's patio and in front of the building, Diagne drove about two blocks away before he got out of the car and fired at pedestrians.
When officers responded to reports of a shooting, they saw him 'coming toward them' and opened fire, killing him.
Footage shared to social media showed the chaotic aftermath of the shooting, with Diagne lying dead in the street.
Party-goers crouched in fear inside the bar as police arrived, before several more gunshots rang out as he opened fire again until officers shot him.
Patrons tended to the wounded along with police officers, as victims screamed in pain, in footage too graphic to publish in full.