Five protestors were shot Monday while protesting the recent shooting death of a black man. Police are looking for three white suspects. The victims’ injuries are reportedly not life-threatening.
“Tonight, white supremacists attacked the #4thPrecinctShutDown in an act of domestic terrorism. We won’t be intimidated.” Black Lives Matter Minneapolis wrote on Facebook. The Washington Post reports that those shot were protesting outside a police station.
A video recorded by a journalist at the scene showed people fleeing from the shooting — then screaming for an ambulance. A young African American man was seen writhing in pain with an apparent gunshot wound to the leg while fellow protesters — then police and paramedics — tried to help.
Details of the shooting, however, remain murky.
Oluchi Omeoga, a young protester who has participated in the demonstrations since last Monday, said she witnessed the incident.
Omeoga and her fellow protesters saw three people wearing masks who “weren’t supposed to be there,” she told the Associated Press. When the three interlopers left the crowd and began walking down the street, a few protesters followed them. But when the three men reached a corner, she said, they pulled out weapons and fired at the protesters.
The shootings come two days after another Black Lives Matter protestor was attacked at a political rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who suggested afterward the victim needed to be “roughed up.”
Protests began in Minneapolis after police shot and killed Jamar Clark, 24, an unarmed black man, during a struggle. Police say they were trying to protect someone Clark had assaulted. Protestors say he was handcuffed when he was shot.