A trail ride and concert event that took place over the weekend at the TVE Fairgrounds in Liberty has the City of Liberty considering changes to some ordinances. The 46th Annual Austonio Wildbunch event on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 11-12, drew in a crowd estimated at 10,000 people and resulted in 44 calls for service for Liberty Police Department, including complaints of aggravated assaults, thefts, alcohol poisoning and loud music.
“We also had a young lady who was asleep in an RV and someone randomly started shooting and hit her. She was released from the hospital this morning,” Liberty City Manager Tom Warner told Bluebonnet News on Monday. “The crowd size was a lot bigger than we can handle. We don’t have that type of manpower. It wouldn’t have mattered if we had 100 officers out there. If we would have tried to break things up, we would have been outnumbered 100 to 1.”
According to Warner, one ordinance that will likely be reviewed pertains to the number of vehicles and people in a procession, such as a parade or trail ride.
“We will likely be taking out the specific numbers in the ordinance and putting in some restrictions. Council will have the final say about it,” Warner said.
The trail ride organizer was issued a permit; however, despite being told to notify Liberty Police Department, the permit-holder never contacted the police department to arrange support and road closures for the trail ride as it moved down FM 563 to Loblolly Ave., then to Layl Drive, onto US 90 and then finally onto Beaumont Ave. toward Ames before making the return trip on the same route back to the TVE Fairgrounds on FM 563.
Warner said that while event organizers provided their own security by hiring off-duty Harris County deputy constables, it wasn’t enough to stop some of the problems that arose.
“We knew there was going to be a trail ride. We didn’t know how many. That was probably our failure in that we should have been more involved in the process. We didn’t know how rambunctious they were going to be,” Warner said.
Rodney House, one of the organizers for the event and whose phone number was listed on the event flyer, said any problems were caused by a “few bad apples.”
“We had all kinds of security. We were checking for guns and everything. We spent a lot of money to make sure this was a good event,” House said. “We worked hard and a few bad apples tore down our history in a weekend.”
House said he was unaware of the shooting incident at TVE prior to Bluebonnet News asking him about it.
“I thought the event was nice. It started out nice and there was no destruction. We stayed out there at the fairgrounds until everything was cleaned up,” House said. “This is our 26th year and we’ve never had a problem before.”
However, House admitted that the same organizers were responsible for a similar event at Rivon’s arena in the Raywood area a couple of years ago. During that event, vehicles created a muddy mess for motorists as they moved out of the arena afterward. The road was closed temporarily and firefighters were tasked with washing down the highway to make it safe for auto travel again.
House said rain is a problem for the event every year, which is why they moved it this year to the indoor arena at TVE.
“It always rains on us. It rains on us every year. That is our pattern,” he said.
Bluebonnet News called and emailed the TVE office for comment; however, calls so far have been unreturned.
I hope something will be dune I was waiting to go in to Liberty for 45 minutes and turned around and had to go all the way to I 10 and go to 146 to go home. If EMS would had got called out there it would had been bad to get through.
I feel bad for the actual trail ride group. You can’t help how some people act. There were other trail ride groups that made it bad for others. You can tell by the number of people that this group brought out that they are a good group and can throw one hell of a party. The bad apples just need to stay away.
I think it was very disrespectful when they came through Treetop Terrace and Layl Dr with their music as loud as it could go. The rap was full of all kinds of profanity and obscenities, not what any of us wanted to see or hear, for sure not our kids to hear. I think they need to find another place to do their trail ride. I’ve been in and around trail rides a lot in my life and you don’t act like that especially in a residential neighborhood.