Videos from the Black Lives Matter protest in Seattle on Sunday show a man driving into a crowd of protestors, scattering people and shooting a man who tried to stop him. The victim was critically injured but still gave an interview as he walked down the street being treated by medics. The protests had largely been peaceful up until that point in the day, when this scene escalated and sent people scattering.
Earlier, the Seattle Police Department put together an improper barricade to direct protestors, which led to the people of Seattle warning one another of the potential danger if things got violent.
“If you are down at the East Precinct today you need to know that these news walls they constructed are not put together correctly, they will fail, and when they do they will likely crush protestors,” tweeted a protestor.
When people saw the suspect’s car barreling down the street, people quickly threw the police’s barricade in front of the car inorder to prevent it from reaching the mass of peaceful protestors. The scene then further escalated when a protestor reached into the driver’s side window in an attempt to punch the driver, and was shot in the arm by the driver. The victim fell to the ground and the suspect got out of the car where he surrendered himself to police and was taken into custody.
The victim, identified as a 27 year-old man named Daniel, was escorted to the hospital by firefighters and on the way, he was interviewed on the event. “My whole thing was to protect those people,” he said as a tourniquet was wrapped around his arm.
After all of this happened and the event began circulating on social media, people couldn’t help but notice the lack of police involvement as the scene escalated.
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Washington state senator Joe Nguyen tweeted, “the person trying to commit vehicular homicide and who just moments earlier shot the man who stopped him is able to walk casually to the police line with a gun and gets politely escorted away…Yesterday people were flash bombed and pepper sprayed for touching the fence!”
Overall, this is just one of the many instances we’ve seen recently of bystanders looking out for fellow citizens. We’re wishing Daniel a speedy recovery and the people of Seattle peace as they continue their protests.
