Late Update: Aug. 25, 2017, 9:16 a.m. ET: The St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office on Thursday afternoon charged Mark Colao, 59, with several counts related to the incident described below, including “Resisting Arrest/Detention/Stop By Fleeing, Leaving the Scene of an Accident and Operating A Motor Vehicle In A Careless & Imprudent Manner.” The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department also released additional video of the incident. Watch below:
Original story below:
A motorist was arrested Wednesday night after allegedly driving through protesters mourning the death of a transgender woman killed by St. Louis police, several news outlets reported.
After a candle-lit vigil in honor of Kenny “Kiwi” Herring, protesters blocked a nearby intersection, walking with candles and chanting.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch photojournalist David Carson reported afterwards that most cars took side streets in order to avoid the protest. However, one black Mercedes drove up to the protesters, honking and “stopping inches short” of hitting them, according to Carson:
The car stopped inches short of protesters, and protesters began moving towards the car. It was dark, and I couldn’t see through the crowd of people very well, but there was some kind of confrontation taking place between the protesters and the driver of the car. The car began moving forward again through the crowd, pushing people with the bumper, striking one woman in the thigh. One man jumped and laid on the hood of the car, and the driver accelerated, and the man fell off the hood and rolled onto the ground. Protesters chased the car and threw things at it as it sped away.
Carson reported that protesters sustained minor cuts and bruises and declined medical care from paramedics. Police managed to pull the Mercedes over “about a half mile away,” where the driver was taken into custody for felony fleeing, according to the reporter’s account.
A spokesperson for the St. Louis circuit attorney’s office told TPM on Thursday that no charges had been filed yet against the driver.
Pix from car that drove through protesters, car stopped was surrounded, then drove through, one person ended up on hood, only minor injuries pic.twitter.com/EYNxSJARoF
— David Carson (@PDPJ) August 24, 2017
St. Louis police said Herring was killed Tuesday morning after allegedly attacking a police officer with a knife. Police had arrived at Herring’s apartment after reports of another stabbing, the Post-Dispatch reported. That stabbing victim was a neighbor of Herring’s.
“The suspect flourished a knife and slashed at the officers, slicing one officer on the arm,” Interim Police Chief Lawrence O’Toole told reporters at a news conference. “The officers fired and shot and killed the suspect.”
A relative of Herring’s, Crevonda Nance, told the Post-Dispatch that Herring and her partner had “been harassed” and “felt threatened” since they moved to St. Louis from Mississippi.
Keith Rose, who claimed to have witnessed the incident with the black Mercedes Wednesday night, told the Post-Dispatch that the driver raised his middle fingers at protesters before driving through them.
Elizabeth Gombos, who also claimed to be a witness to the incident, told the paper: “Once people realized he was going to hurt people, they started to hit his car. I’m not going to deny they hit his car. They hit it with whatever they had … fist, feet. They were trying to make him stop.”
But a police spokesperson said, in the newspaper’s words, that the driver “stopped, honked and attempted to drive around the protesters before some of them surrounded his car and began hitting it with their hands and a flag pole.”
Facebook user Jay-Marie Hill captured video of the incident, beginning at the 15 minute mark below:
Twitter user @MissJupiter1957 also caught the incident on tape:
#StL
I turned my cam just as car was trying to push thru protesters & other protesters ran to try to stop it while I wheeled out of way. pic.twitter.com/pZYlD3jD2i— Heather ♿??? (@MissJupiter1957) August 24, 2017
Exhibit A for why Pence would be an improvement.
These vicious creeps would(likely) no longer have an Inciter/ Enabler-in-Chief.
Sounds a bit backwards, doesn’t it?
I’m sure there will be plenty who will defend the driver by saying the protesters shouldn’t have been blocking the intersection. But short of a true emergency, there’s simply no excuse for trying to push your way through a crowd with your car.
If they’re marching through, wait for them to leave, or if not, politely ask them to let you through and if that doesn’t work and you can’t or won’t wait, then call the cops. Perhaps best of all, unless there is no way to do so (such as on a bridge, one way street, etc.) simply turn the fuck around and seek a different route.
Don’t try to bull your way through the crowd – and if you do, you have zero grounds to complain if people pound on your car.
Report from a protester is that they heard an ambulance siren and they cleared the intersection for it. Also this driver was flippin’ the protesters the bird before he decided to keep moving through them.