Video footage posted online from a recent protest against police in Lafayette, Louisiana, shows an older man slowly driving through demonstrators who are blocking off the entrance to the Circle K gas station and convenience store.
The protesters, screaming “No Justice, No Peace, No Racist Police,” are seen pounding and jumping on the man’s pickup truck as he slowly drives forward, moving them out of the way, to make his way to a pump.
The protesters, stunned the man is driving forward, become increasingly angry. “We are children!” one of the female protesters yells. “We’re f***ing children!”
However, when the man makes his way through the protesters and arrives at the pump, most of the demonstrators flee.
“You need to go back to wherever you came from,” one of the fleeing male protesters yells to the man, to which he calmly responds, “It’s like right around the corner.”
From the available video, which was posted to YouTube by Adam Ford on Monday, it’s unclear if the man was ever able to pump his gas, as he’s blocked by at least one larger protester standing in front of the pump. The man is, however, called a “racist” and “domestic terrorist” and accused of trying to “incite” a “riot.”
“Let me talk to them really quick,” one of the protesters tells the woman videotaping the protest, according to Ford. “This is the type of foolishness that we’re talking about. This man took his vehicle and tried to blast it through a peaceful protest, and tried tried to kill us! That’s exactly what happened!”
“You wanna talk about inciting a riot?” the protester said. “That’s inciting! That’s called domestic terrorism! That’s a domestic terrorist! Make sure that they heard it. This is domestic terrorism!”
The video is narrated by a female voice, explaining that the protest is being held at the Circle K over the death of 31-year-old Lafayette resident Trayford Pellerin, who was fatally shot last month during an interaction with Lafayette police.
TIME Magazine reported last month on the fatal shooting: “Lafayette Police Department officers responded to a disturbance and found a man, 31-year-old Lafayette resident Trayford Pellerin, allegedly armed with a knife in a convenience store’s parking lot, the state police said. The officers tried to approach Pellerin, but he ran away, and the officers followed him on foot as he walked from the convenience store, which was at a Circle K gas station, to a Shell gas station, according to the Lafayette Daily Advertiser. The officers shot him with tasers, but didn’t manage to stop him, the State Police said.”
“As Pellerin tried to go inside the Shell convenience store, the officers shot him, the state police said. The police shot him ’10+ times,’ Benjamin Crump, a civil rights attorney representing Pellerin’s family, wrote on Twitter,” the report added. “Police said Pellerin was brought to a local hospital, where he died. The Lafayette Police Department requested that the Louisiana State Police Bureau of Investigations look into the shooting, the state police said.”
WATCH:
H/t Adam Ford