A protest in Denver on Thursday night over the death of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis police custody took a violent turn when a driver apparently plowed into a crowd of protesters on purpose—speeding up and nearly running over a man who just barely escaped being seriously injured.
Video of the incident posted to social media shows a black SUV honking repeatedly and trying to make it through a crowd of demonstrators as one of the protesters clings to the hood of the vehicle. The driver then accelerates and the man jumps off and walks away, but the driver turns around and swerves right into him as the crowd screams, “Watch out!”
After the man’s leg appears to get caught in the wheel and he falls to the ground, the driver speeds off in the other direction.
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“We wanted a peaceful protest. Everyone had walked away from the car and she purposely turned around and ran him over,” Anabel, a Twitter user who said they witnessed the incident, tweeted.
“He jumped on the car when she accelerated towards him. He jumped off a second later and walked away. She took a hard right to purposely hit him,” she wrote.
The heart-thumping incident wasn’t the only close call at Thursday’s protest in Denver. The State Capitol was placed on lockdown earlier in the evening after gunfire erupted. No injuries were reported, but demonstrators reported bullets buzzing right by them after apparently being fired from across the street.
“We just got shot at… Someone shot into the rally,” Leslie Herod, a state legislator, tweeted.
Police confirmed there was gunfire but said no one had been injured.
