Connect with us

News

BREAKING: Man Rams Vehicle Into Seattle Protest, Fires Gun Into Crowd

A man has been arrested late Sunday after reported ramming his car into a group of protesters in the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct on Capitol Hill and drawing his weapon on the crowd.

Published

4 years ago

on

(TMU) – A man has been arrested late Sunday after reportedly ramming his car into a group of protesters in the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct on Capitol Hill and drawing his weapon on the crowd.

As nationwide protests continue for a second weekend after George Floyd was killed on May 25 during a brutal arrest by the Minneapolis Police Department, events have taken a far more peaceful turn with state National Guard members being demobilized and incidents of riots and violent confrontations tapering off.

However, protesters gathered to demand systemic change outside Seattle’s East Precinct were shocked after an unidentified male assailant drove his car into a group of protesters at 11th and Pine before brandishing his weapon at the crowd and shooting somebody at about 8:30 p.m before fleeing the scene.

In video of the incident shared to social media, the man could be seen driving into the crowd. As protesters swarm the car and begin to hit it after the apparent attempt to ram the vehicle into protesters, the man fires his gun out of the window. He then exits the vehicle with the weapon drawn, causing demonstrators to flee.

According to police, the man was apprehended shortly after the incident and his gun was recovered. The shooting victim, a man in his mid to late 20s, was transported to Harborview Medical Center where he remains in stable condition, KIRO reports.

Since protests began to sweep across the country over the past two weeks, a number of attacks have been launched by civilians with apparently hostile motives against demonstrators demanding racial justice and police accountability.

Last Saturday, New York Police Department officers in Brooklyn plowed two SUVs into demonstrators who were protesting police brutality locally and across the country. Protesters were attempting to block the vehicles and were throwing debris at them before they accelerated the SUVs into the densely-packed crowd.

Last Sunday, a semitruck driver was arrested after he drove into a crowd of peaceful protesters occupying an Interstate 35 bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the epicenter of the nationwide protest movement. Officials later determined that the truck’s driver, Bogdan Vechirko, acted out of panic and didn’t intend to harm the crowd, according to KSTP.

On Thursday in Denver, Colorado, a woman in a black SUV drove through a crowd of protesters. A man who hopped on the hood then fell from the vehicle as the car accelerated. The vehicle then turned and hit the man, knocking him down. The woman drove away, and Denver police are apparently still looking for both her and the victim.

And on May 30th, social media users posted video of two separate incidents of large vehicles striking protesters in San Jose, California.

“The vehicle was coming my way, and I ran to the side,” Saul Duarte, who filmed one of the incidents, told Mercury News. “The whole crowd started chasing the car, but it got away. After that, everyone surrounded the two injured people and tried helping but the cops started tear-gassing us.”

Anxiety over the use of vehicles as weapons against demonstrators have grown since the 2017 killing of Heather Heyer in Charlotesville, Virginia, by neo-Nazi activist James Fields Jr., who was sentenced to life in prison on hate crime charges. Since then, the use of ramming attacks by white supremacists against mass protests has become a tangible fear in the United States.

Like this article? Get the latest from The Mind Unleashed in your inbox. Sign up right here.

Typos, corrections and/or news tips? Email us at Contact@TheMindUnleashed.com

Related Topics:
Advertisement