At least one person was wounded in rural Pennsylvania when a group of civil-rights activists were shot at while marching from Wisconsin to Washington, D.C. _ a terrifying scene that was partially caught on a Facebook Live video late Monday night.
The footage shows two men coming out of a house in Bedford County, with one of them holding what appeared to be a rifle before several shots could be heard. At least one of the shots struck a Black man who then rushed to a car with blood all over his head.
"I got shot in the face," he was heard telling his friends from the backseat of the vehicle, according to a video live-streamed by one of the march's organizers, Frank "Nitty" Sensabaugh.
The victim was taken to the hospital with nonlife-threatening injuries, authorities said.
It's unclear what exactly led up to the shooting, but Pennsylvania State Police said an early investigation suggests "there was an incident" between the activist group and two area residents, both of whom were being questioned Tuesday.
"Gunfire was exchanged and one activist was struck," the agency said in a statement.
The group was traveling from Milwaukee to the nation's capital to attend the "Get Your Knee Off Our Necks" event Friday, which also marks the 57th anniversary of the historic March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
Sensabaugh and other members of the group accused the police of lying and suggested the shooting was an unprovoked hate crime. Another marcher, Tory Lowe, said the group had parked their cars on the side of the road to reorganize when a white man emerged from a nearby home and began shooting at them.
"He just came down the street shooting with a rifle," he said in a video posted to Facebook early Tuesday morning.
Lowe said he and other marchers were able to talk to shooter and tell him they had a minister with them. The man then put his gun down, began talking about Jesus and acted like nothing had happened, Lowe said.
The shooting happened in Juniata Township, a small community in southwest Pennsylvania.
"The racism is so crazy out here," Lowe said in the video.
Sensabaugh, Lowe and another member of their group were arrested while marching through Indiana on Aug. 13 and charged with disorderly conduct and obstruction of traffic. Police said they were blocking traffic on a highway.
The activists told local newspaper The Times-Union that they plan to sue Indiana's Kosciusko County.
"You treat Black people differently than you do white people," Sensabaugh said after the arrest. "So let's play the game to see who loses more money."
