Driver mows down Black Lives Matter protesters in Times Square

Originally reported September 3, 2020

Protesters were shaken but undaunted after an unidentified individual drove a car through a crowd gathered at Times Square Thursday night. They were there to protest the treatment of Daniel Prude, a Black man who died after being suffocated by Rochester police in March.

The group of around 200 had just finished listening to organizers speak in the pouring rain when they began to march down 46th Street. Protester videos show the driver of a black Ford Taurus driving up to the group, pausing and honking, before accelerating into protesters with bikes who attempted to protect the crowd. As people screamed and jumped out of the way, the driver slammed into more people in the street, then sped off.

“I think it might have broke my finger,” Anton Lowe, 35, said, lifting his right hand which was wrapped in a plastic bag. Lowe had been in the street when the car accelerated the second time.

“Usually when we protest it’s peaceful… nobody ever just runs through us like that without a care in the world,” he said. “That was just outrageous. I can’t even explain that.”

Camilla Spielman, 25, was able to jump out of the way.

“None of the cops did anything,” she said. “It just zoomed off and the cops started trying to control the people who were chasing the car.”

Protesters screamed for medics for at least two people. Gothamist reports that FDNY could not confirm at the scene whether anyone was seriously injured and the NYPD did not seize the driver.

After checking for serious injuries, the protesters regrouped and resumed marching to Eighth Avenue.

“We are not afraid!” shouted Nupol Kiazolu, the 20-year old activist and former president of Black Lives Matter Greater New York who called for the protest (pictured below; photography credit Mary Steffenhagen).

They passed dozens of NYPD officers on sidewalks and at least one street barricade with ten riot cops behind it. A cadre of bikers flanked the front and back of the group, blocking off streets for them. Activists sang and danced as they marched to Columbus Circle Central Park in the pouring rain.

“We’re out here for a cause, and all night, as you witnessed, people are trying to deter us from why we’re out here,” said Hercules Reid, 25.

“But you can see with the rain and the crowd, nothing’s going to stop us. I think it actually gave us more energy to fight forward.”

Drivers, including NYPD officers, have plowed through protests in Manhattan and Brooklyn this summer multiple times.

People had initially gathered to condemn the March 30 death of Daniel Prude. His death was not widely publicized until Wednesday. Body camera footage showed police officers putting a hood over Prude’s head, pressing his head into the pavement and kneeling on his back for two minutes until he stopped moving and making sounds. Prude died after being taken off life support a week later. A medical examiner ruled the death as a homicide.