A truck plowed into a Los Angeles crowd of demonstrators protesting the lack of charges in the police killing of Breonna Taylor on Thursday night, striking at least one person and forcing dozens of others to dive out of the way.
The unnamed victim was reported hospitalized in stable condition with minor injuries.
The driver of the truck was stopped by police minutes later and was taken into custody, KTLA and the Los Angeles Times reported. The driver claimed protesters attacked his vehicle first, police said.
A shocking video of the encounter on Thursday shows a large black pickup speeding toward demonstrators in Hollywood shortly before 9 p.m. The vehicle strikes one person, who falls backward on the pavement, and briefly stops. As protesters begin hitting the truck with signs, the vehicle roars away, appearing to run over the person who already had been stuck.
WARNING: The video below contains graphic footage.
KTLA reported that in a separate incident in LA, a white Toyota Prius drove through a crowd and sped off. That driver was also detained by police.
Dozens of demonstrators gathered Thursday for the second day of protests following a grand jury’s decision not to charge officers in Louisville, Kentucky, with murder in Taylor’s death. The Black emergency room worker was shot multiple times in her own home in March after police executed a late-night “no-knock” drug search warrant.
Now-former Detective Brett Hankison was charged with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment. Taylor’s family reached a $12 million settlement with the city of Louisville earlier this month, but their attorney said the decision not to charge any officers with murder was “outrageous and offensive.”
Taylor’s shooting, alongside the deaths of other Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement, prompted a summer of reckoning as demonstrators marched nationwide calling for an end to police brutality and systemic racism.
While the latest demonstrations have been largely peaceful, they have devolved into violence in some places. Two police officers were shot in Louisville on Wednesday. In Seattle, a police officer was captured on video rolling a bike over a demonstrator’s head.