An American journalist, working for an Australian news channel, was shot at in her leg with a rubber bullet, while she was covering the Los Angeles protests, several videos on social media showed.
In the videos, 9News reporter Lauren Tomasi can be seen reporting from the city’s downtown district, when she is shot in the leg by a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer standing guard a few metres behind her.
She is evidently unaware of the officer aiming at her, who shoots at her from a close range. Tomasi can be seen shrieking and limping from the scene with her cameraman yelling at the officer, “You just shot a reporter”.
Tomasi was covering the intensifying protests in LA on Sunday as thousands of people took to the streets in response to US President Donald Trump‘s extraordinary deployment of the National Guard.
The protesters blocked off a major freeway and set self-driving cars of fire as law enforcement used tear gas, rubber bullets and flash bangs to control the crowd.
Later in the day, Tomasi returned to the spot to continue her reporting, assuring her counterpart in the studio that she and her cameraman were “okay and safe” after being caught in the crossfire.
“This is just one of the unfortunate realities of reporting on such kinds of incidents,” she said.
Police declares unlawful assembly in Los Angeles
Many protesters dispersed as evening fell on Sunday and police declared an unlawful assembly, a precursor to officers moving in and making arrests of people who don’t leave, an AP report said.
Some of those remaining threw objects at police from behind a makeshift barrier that spanned the width of a street and others hurled chunks of concrete, rocks, electric scooters and fireworks at California Highway Patrol officers and their vehicles parked on the closed southbound 101 Freeway. Officers ran under an overpass to take cover.
Sunday’s protests in Los Angeles, a sprawling city of 4 million people, were centered in several blocks of downtown. It was the third and most intense day of demonstrations against Trump’s immigration crackdown in the region, as the arrival of around 300 Guard troops spurred anger and fear among many residents.
Dozens arrested at San Francisco protest
In San Francisco, officers monitoring protests arrested dozens of people Sunday night after a group of people refused to comply with an order to disperse, police said in a statement on social media, the report added.
Officers were monitoring a protest in the area of Sansome and Washington streets but declared an unlawful assembly when people in the group became violent, the San Francisco Police Department said. Many people left the scene, but some remained and some moved to Market and Kearny streets, where people vandalised buildings and a police vehicle, AP reported.
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