On Aug. 20, 2020, Olivia Tawzer invited friends over to her house to celebrate her 21st birthday — a party she acknowledges grew too noisy.
“We were playing music, we were loud, we were singing,” she said in a phone call. “We weren’t intentionally throwing a rager, but there was music playing, and we were outside.”
That Thursday evening, the noise was enough to stir her next-door neighbors — Chattanooga City Councilwoman Carol Berz, of Brainerd Hills, and her husband, attorney Charles Dupree — who walked into Tawzer’s house sometime before midnight.
They asked the revelers — which Tawzer estimated numbered between eight and 10 people — to quiet down.