Indiana protester struck by vehicle at 'peaceful' rally, just days after deadly ramming incident in Seattle
An Indiana protester was struck by a car Monday night, the second such incident in three days.
The rally and march in support of Vauhxx Booker, a Black man from Bloomington who said he was assaulted and threatened with a noose by a group of men Saturday at Lake Monroe, was ending when a vehicle drove into a woman and continued driving with her on the hood.
A man attempted to run alongside the vehicle to help the woman and was also carried by the vehicle, witnesses told The Herald-Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. There was no immediate word on their condition.
“All our rallies, all of our marches have been peaceful and these racists keep coming in,” said Caleb Poer, a speaker at Monday night's event.
Multiple witnesses said the driver seemed to intentionally guide the vehicle through the protest. The car was a red Toyota Corolla, according videos posted on social media.
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Bear Schmidt, chairman of Citizens Protest and Safety, a group providing security, medical assistance and other services for the protests, told The Herald-Times that the woman driver said she was going to run over protesters.
The Bloomington Police Department responded to the incident but has yet to release a statement, The Herald-Times reported.
There have been more than 50 vehicle-ramming incidents since May 31, when the protests spurred by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis began across the country, Ari Weil, a terrorism researcher at the University of Chicago, told NPR last month.
Most recently, a 27-year-old man was arrested after his white Jaguar struck two women during a protest in downtown Seattle on Saturday, killing one and critically injuring another, state police said.
In a Twitter thread posted May 31, Weil said the first wave of vehicle rammings began in 2015 during Black Lives Matter protests and demonstrations against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
During the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a white supremacist plowed his car into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and wounding dozens of others.
While Poer said such violence is meant to deter protesters, he said, “This will just light an even bigger fire."
Contributing: Ernest Rollins and Emily Ernsberger, The Herald-Times (Bloomington, Ind.)
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bloomington, Indiana, protester struck by vehicle, carried on hood
