A teen was killed at a Seattle protest. New video evidence shows what really happened
News
The protesters are panicked.
It is shortly before 3 a.m. on June 29, 2020, and racial justice demonstrators at an encampment in Seattle are tracking a stolen white Jeep that’s driving erratically.
A few dozen tents are spread around Cal Anderson Park, where protesters had set up a zone called the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, or CHOP. Some people at the camp had been armed and on high alert for weeks, after a car drove into a crowd of protesters and several shootings in the area. As the Jeep slowly loops around a turf playfield, it comes within 10 feet of a tent and sparks a wave of fear that quickly sweeps the camp.
Details
CHOP existed for 23 days in 2020, an eight-block collection of tents, graffiti and 24-hour protests that emerged after Seattle police abandoned a precinct in the heart of the city. Police left after 10 days of mass protests ignited by the murder of George Floyd. Nearly every night of the standoff had ended with police blanketing the neighborhood with tear gas. After they retreated, it felt like detente. Protesters held movie nights and set up mutual aid stations and stages for speeches and music
But on this night, three weeks after the birth of CHOP, the air is filled not with songs, chants and demands for justice, but with paranoia, menace, gunshots. In the absence of police, an armed, voluntary security force emerged, set up by protesters themselves.
“There’s shots, shots fired I think,” a livestreamer says, capturing the moment in a dark, shaky video broadcast live to Facebook. Then the sound of gunshots. “More shots fired, more shots fired. It’s that white car that’s been circling around.”
Analysis
Livestreamer Diaz Love’s video was one of the first to announce that shots had been fired at CHOP. (Credit: “Thoughts Uncensored” YouTube channel)
The implication is clear: people in the white Jeep are shooting at protesters in CHOP.
Less than 10 minutes later, armed people guarding the protest zone — in the absence of police — shoot all three occupants of the Jeep.
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