Man drives car into Seattle protest crowd and shoots demonstrator

[SummerMadness]

Man drives car into Seattle protest crowd and shoots demonstrator

A man drove his car into a crowd of protesters in Seattle on Sunday, then shot and wounded a demonstrator who confronted him as he came to a stop, according to police and eyewitness video.

Seattle police said firefighters took the man who was shot to the hospital and that he was in stable condition. No one else was injured, police said.

The suspect was seen in the video exiting his car as protesters began to surround it at about 8.30pm local time near the Seattle police department’s east precinct. He brandished what appeared to be a gun, dashed through the crowd and turned himself over to police.

The incident was in contrast to the mostly peaceful weekend protests sparked by the death of George Floyd last month while in Minneapolis police custody.

 

[JustSomeBloke]

Fake news. The video doesn't show a car being driven into a crowd of people.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Fake news. The video doesn't show a car being driven into a crowd of people.

What would you call someone driving a car down a street filled with people?

 

[Handmaid for Jesus]

Fake news. The video doesn't show a car being driven into a crowd of people.

But the shot protester is real enough.

 

[JustSomeBloke]

What would you call someone driving a car down a street filled with people?

I would call it 'not an accurate description of what can be seen in that video on the Guardian website'.

Maybe there is another video showing a crowd of people in front of the car while it is moving, but the video presented by The Guardian doesn't support their description of events. Perhaps you could be so kind as to pause the video at the point where the car driver is forcing his way through a crowd*, and make a screen grab, just so we all know what you think the supporting evidence is.

*One person isn't usually the accepted definition of 'a crowd'

But the shot protester is real enough.

You are quite right. But I never questioned that part of the account.

If you want to be pedantic, I'll call it 50% fake news until I see better evidence.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Fake news. The video doesn't show a car being driven into a crowd of people.

I would call it 'not an accurate description of what can be seen in that video on the Guardian website'.

Maybe there is another video showing a crowd of people in front of the car while it is moving, but the video presented by The Guardian doesn't support their description of events. Perhaps you could be so kind as to pause the video at the point where the car driver is forcing his way through a crowd*, and make a screen grab, just so we all know what you think the supporting evidence is.

*One person isn't usually the accepted definition of 'a crowd'


You are quite right. But I never questioned that part of the account.

If you want to be pedantic, I'll call it 50% fake news until I see better evidence.

That's why we have google.

 

[JustSomeBloke]

That's why we have google.

I have watched that video three times on full screen, and all I saw was some people chasing a car.

Please do tell, what is the time stamp (mm:ss) when you think the car can be seen moving forwards while a crowd is in front of the car. If the video shows that happening then it should be really easy for you to tell us all the timestamp. Even better, pause the video, create a screen grab, and post it here.

I don't know why this has to be such hard work, and it's getting more than a little tiresome. The video title says 'Video shows man driving vehicle into Seattle protesters' but that doesn't appear to be the case. The video is at the very least erroneously-titled!

 

[Handmaid for Jesus]

The video title says 'Video shows man driving vehicle into Seattle protesters' but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Now who is being pedantic? Do you think the eye witness accounts are not true?

 

[Hans Blaster]

Maybe there is another video showing a crowd of people in front of the car while it is moving, but the video presented by The Guardian doesn't support their description of events. Perhaps you could be so kind as to pause the video at the point where the car driver is forcing his way through a crowd*, and make a screen grab, just so we all know what you think the supporting evidence is.

Maybe this is a matter of language and that we don't quite use prepositions in the same ways for some subtle things. So let's be clear:

The driver was driving his car *toward* a crowd of people.

The car clearly slowed at some point as it came to a stop before hitting anyone. I don't have a history of the speed, so I don't know when the deceleration began.

Given the activities on that street and around the corner (the intersection through which he fled) I suspect (but don't know for certain) that the street was closed to traffic. (There were cars parked on the street, but streets are often closed with cars parked on them that are effectively trapped until reopening.)

Even if your intent is *not* to ram people in the street with a car, driving toward a crowd like that is quite dangerous. Any small mistake or miscalculation in applying breaking or slipping off the brake pedal could cause a collision with the pedestrians.

He entered the street moving fairly quickly for a pedestrian filled environment. I'm not saying he was moving "very fast" as the cars speed seem to be roughly the normal speed for a street like that under normal circumstances. Even if he had a legitimate reason to travel down a pedestrian filled street (like to return to his apartment's parking garage) he should have traveled down the street much slower from the start.

The street he drove down is fairly level (the cross streets go up/down a steep slope) and all of the downtown Seattle streets are on a rectangular grid, so he either drove down the street trough multiple intersections, or entered just out of frame of the earliest of the videos. (I haven't looked at the one specifically in the Guardian, but there are only about 5-6 total videos circulating so I've almost certainly seen that video.)

There were people running after him and throwing things at his car to get him to slow down. This may have legitimately frightened him.

He had a gun in his car or on his person while driving down that street. When confronted by the man at his window, he pointed that gun at him and it went off. The firing of the gun may have been an accidental discharge, but he made the choice to point the weapon toward the man outside his window. If I'd accidentally entered that street unaware that there was a crowd of people at the next intersection, I might have slowed down in a similar fashion and been frightened by the thrown things and people running at me, but I certainly would have been quickly and loudly begging forgiveness for my mistake. (I would also be unarmed.)

When he exited the car, he held his gun out in a position ready to use it, roughly waist-high and pointed level while rounding the back of his car. I don't know whether his finger was inside the trigger guard or not, but if it was, the muzzle was potentially pointed at people. (Since he'd already fired it, I doubt the safety had been reengaged in those few seconds.) Before entering the crowd at the intersection he lowered the gun, but kept it in his hand.

The gun's magazine was strapped (rubber bands, tape, but something blue) to a second magazine. This sort of configuration is used to avoid fetching a second magazine to reload from a pocket or belt and speed reloading when the first is empty. The magazine also appears to be longer than the grip of the pistol (or there would be no place to tape on the second one) indicating it is high capacity. I don't know if there is any standard operational usage of strapping magazines together like that in the police or military.

At some point before emerging from the crowd into a gap between them and a line of police, he placed the gun in his pocket. After emerging from the crowd he raised his hands and surrendered. While doing so he told the officers that he "had to shoot" (or something to that effect) someone who was attacking him (or perhaps his car).

So here are the questions to which we do not have answers:

1. Did he pass a barrier or other indication that the street was occupied? How far should he have been able to see the crowd in the street? (was there a small rise that blocked view?) How fast was he driving at each point and how much of his available breaking capacity?

2. Why was he armed? Is it a legal weapon and accessories (magazines)?

3. Did he intend to ram his car into the crowd? If so, did he chicken out? Did the "attackers" distract or deter him?

4. Did he intend to shoot into the crowd given that he'd come with ample ammunition? Did the gun firing at the man at the window disturb his plans (shake him up) such that he lost his nerve?

Most of the first two questions are facts that have yet to make it into public information. The second two are about motivation. It's entirely possible that he only planned to park near the protest and confront them using the gun only if needed to protect himself from the "violent Anti-Fa hordes" (hence the large ammunition supply), but his plan went astray when the protestors tried to defend their group from an approaching car and his gun "self-defense" shot someone. We don't know yet and some if it we may never know.

 

[iluvatar5150]

I have watched that video three times on full screen, and all I saw was some people chasing a car.

Please do tell, what is the time stamp (mm:ss) when you think the car can be seen moving forwards while a crowd is in front of the car. If the video shows that happening then it should be really easy for you to tell us all the timestamp. Even better, pause the video, create a screen grab, and post it here.

I don't know why this has to be such hard work, and it's getting more than a little tiresome. The video title says 'Video shows man driving vehicle into Seattle protesters' but that doesn't appear to be the case. The video is at the very least erroneously-titled!

When the camera zooms in at around 00:10, I can clearly see a sizable crowd of people in the street ahead of the car, running out of the way.

 

[JustSomeBloke]

I am sorry that I have to inform you that you all got duped by a heavily edited fake news video. Sure, some people moved to the side of the road to let the car through, but it's nothing like you'd think it was if you only watched the edited video, or just read the title 'Video shows man driving vehicle into Seattle protesters'. It's most definitely not the crowd-ramming scene that most viewers might have expected based on the video title and the mainstream media's description of the event. Then again, I suppose the lack of casualties (apart from the person who was shot) should have been a bit of a clue that you'd all been lied to and totally duped.

Please everyone be more careful in future before you believe heavily edited videos posted by people and organisations with an agenda to sow hatred and division. Here's the unedited truth.

If you don't want to sign in to watch it I suggest you replace 'youtube' in the URL with 'nsfwyoutube'. By the way, isn't it odd how the unedited video has been flagged for sign in, but the edited one hasn't? Some people want to make it harder to see what really happened, and I'll bet it wasn't the person who posted the unedited video. Agenda? Much?

You can all go home now. There's nothing to see here. I hope you all learn to be more sceptical in future.

Edit: Removed duplicate video.

 

[Hans Blaster]

I am sorry that I have to inform you that you all got duped by a heavily edited fake news video. Sure, some people moved to the side of the road to let the car through, but it's nothing like you'd think it was if you only watched the edited video, or just read the title 'Video shows man driving vehicle into Seattle protesters'. It's most definitely not the crowd-ramming scene that most viewers might have expected based on the video title and the mainstream media's description of the event. Then again, I suppose the lack of casualties (apart from the person who was shot) should have been a bit of a clue that you'd all been lied to and totally duped.

Please everyone be more careful in future before you believe heavily edited videos posted by people and organisations with an agenda to sow hatred and division. Here's the unedited truth.

Nope. I saw this video (as you presented it) on the night it happened. Not on the news, but on twitter as posted by the recorder. Despite the hysterical screaming, the videographer was a professional and he and his agent repeatedly declined news media requests to use the footage without compensation.

As I said at the beginning of my previous post in this thread I think we have a word problem here.

1. "Crowd". A crowd is an amorphous blob of people. The edge of a crowd is loosely defined, especially if membership in the crowd is ill defined. One edge definition would be a closed loop connecting the outermost persons in the crowd that encloses all members.

2. "Into". In this case one definition that would seem to apply is entering into something would be to pass through the boundary.

In this case there are people in the street *behind* the car from the first frame after the camera turns up street to see the car. During the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the visible path of the car, the crowd is mostly on one side of the street (opposite from lane for travel in the car's direction) and the car does not drive through any place where the video shows people having been.

The crowd is thicker further down the street, and the car passes through areas where there were many people. These people are not hit by the care because they are able to move to the edge of the street out of the car's path. At this point the car is *definitely* driving into the crowd.

At the end of the car's path, the crowd gets even thicker and there are still people directly in the extrapolated path of the car. If the car had not slowed to a stop some of these people would likely to have been hit.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Sure, some people moved to the side of the road to let the car through,

Sure, just like these people are moving to let the bullets through:

Twitter has security footage of him barreling around the corner onto the street, almost hitting somebody in the crosswalk (his brother also apparently works at the precinct):
‘His brother works here at this precinct’ — Police say Capitol Hill protest shooting suspect was ‘fearing for his life’

Twitter also points out that he's got two magazines jungle taped together, because reasons:
https://twitter.com/spekulation/status/1269862492403953664

But go on, keep being an apologist for a guy who decided to drive through a crowd and only stopped because somebody dragged a steel barricade in the way.

 

[agapelove]

I am sorry that I have to inform you that you all got duped by a heavily edited fake news video. Sure, some people moved to the side of the road to let the car through, but it's nothing like you'd think it was if you only watched the edited video, or just read the title 'Video shows man driving vehicle into Seattle protesters'. It's most definitely not the crowd-ramming scene that most viewers might have expected based on the video title and the mainstream media's description of the event. Then again, I suppose the lack of casualties (apart from the person who was shot) should have been a bit of a clue that you'd all been lied to and totally duped.

Please everyone be more careful in future before you believe heavily edited videos posted by people and organisations with an agenda to sow hatred and division. Here's the unedited truth.

If you don't want to sign in to watch it I suggest you replace 'youtube' in the URL with 'nsfwyoutube'. By the way, isn't it odd how the unedited video has been flagged for sign in, but the edited one hasn't? Some people want to make it harder to see what really happened, and I'll bet it wasn't the person who posted the unedited video. Agenda? Much?

You can all go home now. There's nothing to see here. I hope you all learn to be more sceptical in future.

Edit: Removed duplicate video.

Perhaps it is only you who thinks “driving into” means a crowd-ramming scene. Any other person who watches that video would agree the driver is driving into a crowd. If people have to literally run out of the way, then he is driving into them. It also looks like he probably would not have stopped if some protesters didn’t put up that barricade. Just curious, what would you have titled this video?

 

[JustSomeBloke]

In your desperation to spin this to fit your agenda, you are careering all over the place.

First you try and spin it as a language issue centred on the word 'into'.

Maybe this is a matter of language and that we don't quite use prepositions in the same ways for some subtle things. So let's be clear:

The driver was driving his car *toward* a crowd of people.

Then you claim you've already seen the unedited video I posted. But that seems unlikely, given your previous attempt to spin 'into' to 'toward'.

Nope. I saw this video (as you presented it) on the night it happened. Not on the news, but on twitter as posted by the recorder. Despite the hysterical screaming, the videographer was a professional and he and his agent repeatedly declined news media requests to use the footage without compensation.

Then having seen the unedited video I posted, you completely change tactic, and try to spin it as a totally different language or word problem, centred on the word 'crowd' and some self-serving argument about passing through some imaginary 'boundary'.

As I said at the beginning of my previous post in this thread I think we have a word problem here.

1. "Crowd". A crowd is an amorphous blob of people. The edge of a crowd is loosely defined, especially if membership in the crowd is ill defined. One edge definition would be a closed loop connecting the outermost persons in the crowd that encloses all members.

2. "Into". In this case one definition that would seem to apply is entering into something would be to pass through the boundary.

If it helps, this is what 'driving into a crowd of people' really looks like, and it's not even remotely similar to that unedited video I posted earlier. Can you see the difference?

By the way, I doubt that either the driver of that black car or the drivers of either of those police cars will be found guilty of any crime. The black car driver because he not only had good reason to fear for his life and was acting in self defence, but he also immediately sought police protection from the violent mob, which is a sign of acting in good faith. The police drivers, because it was obvious there was a high risk they were about to have their vehicles trashed and possibly be dragged out and be assaulted or even killed, and because those people were obstructing an emergency services vehicle for no good reason.

But go on, keep being an apologist for a guy who decided to drive through a crowd and only stopped because somebody dragged a steel barricade in the way.

The driver had almost stopped by the time he got to that black barrier thing. If he really wanted to take out the 'peaceful protesters' he would have accelerated and smashed through that insignificant little barrier, then got out and carried on shooting until his magazine was empty. Do you really think an improvised barrier light enough to be moved by one person could stop a car at 40-50mph? The reality is that the route ahead was impassable without killing a lot of people so he stopped to avoid killing and maiming them. He saw the danger of being surrounded by an angry mob bent on instant justice, shot the violent idiot attacking him through his car window (and obstructing his exit route), then immediately sought police protection without firing another shot. Rather odd that someone you claim was apparently geared up to kill, with magazines arranged for plenty of rounds, fired just one shot in self defence.

Just curious, what would you have titled this video?

'Footage: protester attacking driver gets shot' (same as the title in the unedited video I posted).


The best thing for everyone is for all these violent hooligans to start behaving like the peaceful protesters they claim to be, or go home.

I'm done with this now. There's clearly no argument, interpretation, or tactic that is too ridiculous, illogical, or threadbare for CF Liberals. Sadly, for you at least, I don't think the majority of the American public will support your narrative in November.

 

[Rajni]

Videos can be altered and stories can be spun different ways.
Since just about everyone *knows* this, why, for the love of
God, do they insist on continuing to watch or read "the news"?
Obviously, it's not to be informed, so what is it? Adrenaline
addiction?

Absolutely fascinating.
-

 

[agapelove]

'Footage: protester attacking driver gets shot' (same as the title in the unedited video I posted).

"Protesters attempting to damage a vehicle driving 40-50mph down a crowded street get shot at by angry driver claiming to fear for his life, one wounded" is more accurate, if we're both trying to avoid agendas.

 

[Ana the Ist]

What would you call someone driving a car down a street filled with people?

Driving down the street.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Sure, just like these people are moving to let the bullets through:

Twitter has security footage of him barreling around the corner onto the street, almost hitting somebody in the crosswalk (his brother also apparently works at the precinct):
‘His brother works here at this precinct’ — Police say Capitol Hill protest shooting suspect was ‘fearing for his life’

Twitter also points out that he's got two magazines jungle taped together, because reasons:
https://twitter.com/spekulation/status/1269862492403953664

But go on, keep being an apologist for a guy who decided to drive through a crowd and only stopped because somebody dragged a steel barricade in the way.

Really depends upon the laws doesn't it? 2014-2015 saw a lot of rioting....ermm...protesting in the streets.

A lot of major cities passed laws as a result that hold protesters responsible for any damages they or vehicles sustain if you're in the streets where you aren't supposed to be.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Videos can be altered and stories can be spun different ways.
Since just about everyone *knows* this, why, for the love of
God, do they insist on continuing to watch or read "the news"?
Obviously, it's not to be informed, so what is it? Adrenaline
addiction?

Absolutely fascinating.
-

Some of us know what it looks like when video is edited to tell a story. Some of us are able to look at the multiple videos from different vantage points and piece together a decent idea of what happened.