One Lady dead, Three Injured After Vehicle Run Into Protesters In Minneapolis
A woman was killed and three people were injured when a vehicle rammed into a team of protesters in the Minneapolis neighborhood where a Black man was fatally shot this month in the course of a tried arrest, police stated Monday.
Just before midnight Sunday, the suspect drove a vehicle into the crowd and was pulled from the car before being arrested, the Minneapolis police branch stated on Twitter. A statement from police stated a preliminary investigation indicated that the use of drugs or alcohol by the driver may be a contributing factor in the crash.
A woman was reported lifeless at the hospital after the crash and three people were handled and released for non life-threatening injuries.
“I’ve by no means seen anything that horrendous,” Zachery James, 28, told the New York Times at the scene, where several people remained for hours. “I watched her body fly.”
The town has been on edge since the demise of George Floyd more than a year ago and the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright during the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was discovered guilty on all counts in Floyd's murder. There have been multiple protests in Minneapolis' Uptown neighborhood after Winston Smith Jr, a 32-year-old Black father of three, was fatally shot by two sheriff's deputies on June 3.
The deputies – one from Hennepin County and one from Ramsey County – were part of a U.S. Marshals Service task force that was trying to arrest Smith on a warrant for unlawful possession of a firearm, in accordance to a assertion from the agency. Smith, who was parked in a car, "failed to comply with officers’ commands" and "produced a handgun ensuing in mission force members firing upon the subject," the statement said.