If you had the misfortune of parking in the Hilburn Holdings parking lot for the Brookland-Cayce C-Team football game Wednesday, you got a big post-game surprise.

Hilburn Holdings, at the corner of 7th Street and Knox-Abbott Drive called in Tillman towing to impound your vehicle.

Cost to get your car back: $175. That is double the normal rate for towed vehicles.

In the course of an hour-or-so the seven Tillman tows conceivably resulted in $1,225, from Brookland-Cayce patrons who concluded it was OK to park in the place they’d been parking for years. Fonseca-Hilburn said Hiburn Holdings does not get any profit from the $1,225 from the vehicle confiscations.

The seizure of cars came two days before Brookland-Cayce is holding its homecoming festival. The homecoming football game is Friday at 7:30 p.m.

Hilburn Holdings moved in recently and said they have warned trespassers.

Anne Fonseca Hilburn, wife and partner of David Hiburn, Hilburn’s owner, said in an email: “we have been trying to be a nice neighbor; we have contacted the school countless times regarding the illegal parking, garbage left behind by their guests and the liability we incur by having non-employees parking on our property.”

She went on to say: “We have been very tolerant in that we have made flyers, placed them on each car throughout the year, physically spoken to people parking and asked them to please not park on our property but to no avail. Our employees on several occasions have gotten into verbal altercations with people because they feel they can disregard the “No Parking” signs.”

On Wednesday, as the BC-C-Team took on Pleasant Hill and posted a thrilling win, there were no warnings in the form of flyers, or verbally.

The drivers who came out to find their cars removed were stunned. Even more startling was the $175 charge to get the car back. Normally, one of the tow-truck drivers said, Tillman would charge $85 for a tow, and $3.50-a-mile to go to the lot, a mobile home, at 1749 Airport Boulevard. But that fee was doubled on Wednesday.

Despite the severity of the fee, Fonseca-Hilburn was unapologetic: “of course there will always be those whom believe that the law does not apply to them,” she wrote in response.

But a man who was at Tillman late Wednesday to get his car so he could go to his job the next day, said he did not see the small signs posted. He also said since the business was closed, and he had always parked there with no incident, he did not think anything was different. He said he never would have parked there if it were clear that the owners did not want him to.