Five Black Lives Matter protesters were shot at during a protest last night in Minneapolis, Minnesota just a few blocks away from a police precinct.
According to a statement posted to the group’s Facebook page, the men, whom they call “white supremacists,” opened fire after they were asked to leave. According to police, the people shot suffered non-life threatening injuries.
From Minnesota Public Radio:
“Rumors about the nature of the shootings — and the shooters — spread quickly through the encampment. Twitter feeds, using the hashtags #Justice4Jamar and #FourthPrecinctShutdown that they’d been using all week, lit up the Internet with theories of the shooters’ identities and police involvement.
” ‘I don’t want to perpetuate rumor,’ U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, who has joined the group throughout the week-plus demonstration, said after the shootings. ‘I’d rather just try to get the facts out. That’s a better way to go. I know there’s a lot of speculation as to who these people were. And they well could have been, I’m not trying to say they weren’t white supremacists. But I just haven’t been able to piece together enough information to say with any real clarity.’ “
The social activist group recently uncovered video from last night’s horrors:
https://www.facebook.com/BlackLivesMatterMinneapolis/videos/1011158522261274/
Below, a fellow protester describes what happened:
https://twitter.com/mvnclv/status/669068218040913920
Minnesota’s Black Lives Matter group aired out their grievances on Twitter shortly after:
https://twitter.com/BlackLivesMpls/status/669185749368094720
https://twitter.com/BlackLivesMpls/status/669169251375292416
https://twitter.com/BlackLivesMpls/status/669111708296699905
https://twitter.com/BlackLivesMpls/status/669083837918371840
The group has clearly vowed to continue onward with their protests.
Demonstrators had set up camp outside the Minneapolis Police Department’s 4th Precinct to pretest the fatal shooting of Jamar Clark, a black man who was shot in the head by a police officer because he “interfered with paramedics who were treating his girlfriend.”
