The New York police department says it is trying to find a car that drove through a group of Black Lives Matter protesters blocking a street in Times Square on Thursday night.
Video posted on social media showed the car jerking through the crowd with its horn blaring as demonstrators scream and scramble out of the way.
Car drives through Black Lives Matter protesters, Times Square, New York City, 8:10 PM, Thursday, September 3, 2020#BlackLivesMatter #BLM #TimesSquare #NewYorkCity #NewYork #NYC #ny pic.twitter.com/G3mwAy3vGx
— DataInput (@datainput) September 4, 2020
One video posted on Twitter by a user named DataInput, showed a dark sedan plowing into a crowd of people who were standing in front of the vehicle with bicycles.
Gwynne Hogan, a WNYC reporter, tweeted that the crowd appeared “rattled” but that “most people were able to jump out of the way.”
No one appeared to be seriously injured. The NYPD said on Twitter that the car was not a police vehicle.
The protesters had gathered after seven police officers involved in the suffocation death of Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York, were suspended. Prude, 41, who was Black, died when he was taken off life support on 30 March, seven days after officers who encountered him running naked through the street put a hood over his head to stop him from spitting, then held him down for about two minutes until he stopped breathing.
Prude’s death was described by a medical examiner as a ‘‘homicide caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint”, and came into the national spotlight this week as his family called again for justice.
Despite the incident with the car, the protesters continued their march on Thursday evening.
There is an ongoing investigation into an incident in Times Square involving a black Taurus sedan. This auto is NOT an NYPD vehicle. pic.twitter.com/kBGuXhFtP1
— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) September 4, 2020
Associated Press contributed to this report
