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Women claim man threatened to attack them in Piedmont Park
The incident happened Monday afternoon. They said it took someone intervening to get the man to stop threatening them.
ATLANTA - A woman said a moment caught on social media between her and a complete stranger at a Piedmont Park was terrifying. The video shows the man approaching the two women with what is believed to be a sharp object. The video has since gone viral.
Tyler Lee said the man threatened to attack them before a bystander stepped in to intervene. They said the popular Midtown park is just not safe anymore.
Lee posted the video on Instagram which captured her frightening encounter with this unidentified man at Atlanta's Piedmont Park on Monday afternoon.
"He comes over and starts literally yelling at us, cussing us out. Saying he would beat us up," Lee said.
She, her friend Brittany Sanders and Sander's two young children were enjoying an afternoon in the park when they said the man appeared out of nowhere and began harassing them.
"And this was broad daylight. This was at like 5 o’clock in the afternoon. It wasn't at night or anything like that. There were a lot of people around. People didn't intervene at first. They didn't know we didn't know him," Sanders said.
The women said the man started throwing things at them. That's when Lee started recording him. She said the bystander in the video, who intervened as the man walked toward them with an object in his hand, helped deescalate the situation.
She believes the man was mentally ill.
"He walked up to us and had a big object we don’t know what it was probably like a tree but it was so sharp I was afraid he was going to run upon us and try to like stab us," Lee said.
The women said they spoke with police officers in the area, telling them what happened and were told they would keep an eye out for him.
FOX 5 contacted APD about the incident. They said investigators were aware a video has been circulated on social media that appears to show a male acting strangely in the park near 14th Street NE and Piedmont Avenue NE and report that incident is still being investigated. It has not been confirmed who was involved in that incident or if a crime was committed.
Lee said she already felt uneasy about going to the park following last month's murder here.
"I will never go to Piedmont Park again," Lee said.
Sanders is grateful that bystander came to their rescue.
"Luckily, the guy that stepped in, he stopped him at the right time because I don't we didn't know what we were going to do. We didn’t want to walk off because he was following us. Thanks to the guy that stepped in," Sanders said.
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