A man attending the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month fired his gun in the direction of a black counterprotester who was holding a torch, and police in their vicinity did not seem to respond.
Those events appear in a video filmed two weeks ago by a volunteer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and published by the civil rights group on Saturday.
As seen in the footage below, a man in a blue sleeveless shirt, a green vest and a bandana on his head pulls out a gun and aims it at a counterprotester, who is off camera and appears to be holding a makeshift lit torch. The first man appears to yell a racial slur at the black man, then fires the gun toward the ground in the direction of the counterprotesters.
The shooter then leaves the scene by joining a line of white supremacist protesters and walking past law enforcement officers, who were standing behind metal barricades about 10 feet away.
Here’s the video—racist pulls gun and fires on black protester, cops did nothing pic.twitter.com/lE2PcGKJRw
— Matt Bors (@MattBors) August 26, 2017
Police arrested Richard Wilson Preston, 52, in connection with the incident in the video above, the Daily Progress reported on Saturday. Wilson was charged with discharging a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school during the so-called “Unite The Right” rally on Aug. 12. He is in custody in Towson, Maryland.
Rosia Parker, a Charlottesville activist who was there when the man fired his gun, told the New York Times that police did nothing when the shooting occurred.
“We all heard it and ran ― I know damn well they heard it,” Parker told the Times, referencing the police who were standing behind the barricades. “They never moved.”
Corinne Geller, a spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police, told the newspaper that troopers did not react to the shooting because they couldn’t hear the gun being fired over “the loud volume of the crowd yelling and chanting, drums and music.”
https://twitter.com/RawStory/status/918985297484017664
ROT IN JAIL, MOFO!
https://twitter.com/SunInvestigates/status/916757043020570624
I’m not expecting any help from the police. The majority of them don’t care if Blacks are murdered, especially now thanks to the Instigator-In-Chief with his evil racist self.
The police didn’t hear the gun? That’s hard to believe.
This guy should be charged with attempted murder. I don’t give a damn if he fired toward the ground. He fired at a crowd of people and bullets ricochet, don’t they?
Attempted murder is the right charge, IMO.
Definitely a hate crime…evil.