A car struck a pedestrian in a hit-and-run incident at a Michael Brown vigil yesterday on the second anniversary of the 2014 shooting that brought police brutality back into the national spotlight.
According to NBC News, protesters and mourners were blocking a roadway when officers instructed them to move to the sidewalk. One man was still in the street when a white sedan came out of nowhere and struck him.
In the footage captured by frequent protester Heather De Mian, a man is standing in the middle of the street right before a car strikes him. The white sedan appears to not slow down in the first three seconds of video. The driver runs right into him, sending the body skidding across the street to a crowd of people.
“[The car] just came out of nowhere and the protester just flew in the air,” De Mian told NBC News, “and I started screaming because I thought he was dead. I was terrified that he was dead that’s why I was screaming, and then 50 seconds later, two rounds of gunshots.”
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the driver of the white sedan did not see the pedestrian and she was willingly cooperating with police.
Allegedly, witnesses said multiple protesters pulled out guns and fired at the fleeing car, per the Post-Dispatch.
“By all accounts, her version of what happened seems to fit the version of what happened to a person driving down a busy West Florissant Avenue and not seeing a person standing there,” Ferguson Police Spokesman Jeff Small said.
The man who was struck by the car was escorted away in a private car.
