Eight people suffered severe eye injuries at protests across the country on May 30. In three instances, video evidence undermines official accounts of what happened.
Protests erupted in cities across the country on May 30, the Saturday after George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis. As law enforcement officers moved to clear the streets, some fired what are called “less lethal” munitions.
The Washington Post found that eight people lost vision in one eye after being struck by police projectiles, including lead pellets packed in cloth pouches that were fired from shotguns. They were among 12 people who were partially blinded by police during a week of national unrest.
Of the eight who lost sight that day, six were protesters, one was a photojournalist, and another was a passerby. Drawing on cellphone and surveillance videos, along with other records, The Post reconstructed the circumstances of three of those incidents in detail. Continue reading.
This week, federal prosecutors announced that they had charged Steven Carrillo with murder and attempted murder for the killing of Security Officer David Patrick Underwood outside a courthouse in Oakland, California, on May 29. While the FBI claims Carrillo, a 32-year-old staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, is the gunman who “allegedly fired multiple rounds from a firearm toward the guard post” out the passenger side of a moving van, their allegations against Carrillo hint at an even darker layer of the drive-by shooting, involving the nebulous, ill-defined 