A dangerous street race through a residential neighbourhood in Beverly Hills has residents outraged after it was caught on camera this past weekend.
However, L.A. Police now say the men involved may avoid prosecution due to diplomatic immunity.
Residents captured the two high-performance cars, a white Porsche 9/11 and a yellow Ferrari LaFerrari, tearing through a residential neighborhood at around 6:45 p.m. PT Friday afternoon in the 700 block of North Walden Drive.
Amateur video shows the two drivers speeding, running stop signs and barreling through four-way stops, and at one point almost hitting another vehicle as they race down crowded residential streets.
Eventually, the Ferrari was forced to pull into a driveway with smoke pouring from its engine block, either from the race or from repeated “burnouts”.
WATCH: Ferrari, Porsche tear through residential neighborhood in Beverly Hills
“My boys were out in the street biking and it was very scary. They were passing the stop sign several times for a good 20 minutes,” Roya Levian, a witness, told CBS 2 in Los Angeles.
READ MORE: Father of injured Surrey boy says drivers treat residential streets like a racetrack
Freeland journalist Jacob Rogers says he attempted to confront the drivers after they had pulled into the home, but the men claimed they were protected by diplomatic immunity.
“He told me verbatim, ‘I could have you killed and get away with it,'” Rogers told NBC Los Angeles. “I told him, ‘the press is allowed to be here on the sidewalk on a public street.’”
“He said, ‘F*** America’ and threw a cigarette at me.”
Police confirmed in a press release that the men are of Qatari descent and may in fact be protected by diplomatic immunity.
Police say they’ve taken the complaints from residents and are working with the U.S. State Department to determine what course of action to take.
Meanwhile, residents just want to feel safe walking down their own streets again.
“God knows if they could like hit one of us or something,” Joe Nouri told KTLA-5 News.
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