Speeding car hits Black Lives Matter group protesting ‘attempted lynching’ in Indiana

Two people protesting an alleged attack of a Black man were struck by a speeding vehicle Monday in Bloomington, Indiana, video shows.

Bloomington police are now searching for the driver who struck a 29-year-old woman and 35-year-old man, the department posted Tuesday on Facebook.

Police say the driver accelerated toward the woman during the protest, causing her “to go up onto the hood of the car.” The man grabbed the side of the vehicle and clung to it, then they were thrown off the vehicle when the driver turned, according to police.

The woman was knocked unconscious and was taken to a hospital in an ambulance after suffering a cut to her head, police said. The man had scrapes on his arms, according to police.

The male victim, Geoff Stewart, said the female driver was revving her engine before accelerating toward them.

“I was just trying to block her vision so she would slow down so I tried to pull myself as far in her way to obstruct her view,” Stewart told RTV6. “She drove through red lights and made her turn up here that threw both of us off the car.”

The female victim was identified as Chaz Mottinger, according to the Indiana Daily Student. One of her friends set up a GoFundMe to raise $10,000 for hospital expenses, and within 14 hours it had more than $15,000 in donations. The friend said additional funds will be donated to Black Lives Matter.

Police have not located the suspect but said it has license plate information of the vehicle.

A witness, Erin Parks, told WTHR she has “never been that infuriated” in her life.

“You see a human in front of the car, but this person just hit the gas as hard as they could and they kept going, and then they tried to throw people off the car at high speeds,” Parks said, according to the TV station. “It didn’t make any sense.”

Why were they protesting?

Monday’s protest, attended by hundreds of people according to the Daily Student, took place after an alleged attack to a Black man, Vauhxx Booker.

Booker wrote on Facebook on Sunday he was “almost the victim of an attempted lynching” by a group of five white men.

One of the men accused Booker of trespassing on private property while he was in a Bloomington park to watch the lunar eclipse on the Fourth of July, he said. As he was trying to take a different route, the five men jumped him, Booker wrote.

“The five were able to easily overwhelm me and got me to the ground and dragged me pinning my body against a tree as they began pounding on my head and ripped off some of my hair, with several of them still on top of my body holding me down,” he wrote on Facebook. “They held me pinned and continued beating me for several minutes seemingly become more and more enraged as they kept trying to seriously injure me and failing.”

Some of the alleged attackers shouted at Booker, “We’re going to break his arms,” and others stated to their party to “get a noose,” he said.

Onlookers, who were all white, intervened and helped rescue Booker from the tree, he wrote. Video was shared to Facebook of the final moments of the encounter.

“This attack occurred on public land and was recorded by numerous individuals who made statements against the attackers for assaulting them and me,” he wrote. “I’m gravely concerned that if any other people of color who were to cross their path they could be killed.”

Booker said he suffered a minor concussion, abrasions, bruising and had some hair ripped out.

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources is investigating the incident with the Monroe County prosecutor’s office, the agency said.

The attack’s reaction

In a joint letter, Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton and Bloomington City Clerk Nicole Bolden denounced the incident involving Booker, as well as a separate incident involving a deputy from another county detaining a Black Bloomington resident “in an apparent example of racial profiling.”

“These separate incidents exemplify the persistence of racism and bias in our country and our own community,” the officials wrote. “They deserve nothing less than our collective condemnation. They require that we come together as a whole, and recognize that racism damages all of us, not just our residents of color.”

State Sen. Mark Stoops, a Democrat from Bloomington, said he was “horrified about this racist attack.”

“This is not just an issue of violence; this is clearly a hate crime and must be treated as such,” he said.

He called for Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb to suspend the DNR officers, who he said did not respond to the scene the way they should have.

“There is no law against ignorance and no law against the probable angry verbal exchange that preceded this violence, but we do have laws that protect people from physical attacks and intimidation,” Stoops wrote. “The men in question should have been removed from the park and taken into custody, pending charges.”

Former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg wrote on Twitter the incident “is absolutely sickening. Something is deeply wrong in Indiana.”

Katharine Liell, who is representing Booker, told WTTV she believes arrests will be made.