Reuters reported Wednesday evening that protests in Louisville, Kentucky over a grand jury decision in the Breonna Taylor case were “mostly peaceful” until after the 9 p.m. curfew, when protesters confronted police and gunshots “rang out.”
Demonstrations in Louisville wore on past nightfall in defiance of a 9 p.m. curfew and remained mostly peaceful until several gunshots rang out in the midst of a skirmish between protesters and heavily armed police https://t.co/lvEd2XalpJ pic.twitter.com/L8GrPNrwCg
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 24, 2020
Two police officers were shot during “protests” that had turned violent long before the 9 p.m. curfew, contrary to Reuters.
Filmmaker Brendan Gutenschwager documented many instances of violence that began in the afternoon and continued:
The window smashing has begun #Louisville #LouisvilleProtest #BreonnaTaylor pic.twitter.com/KEJIBjlr7o
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) September 23, 2020
Someone threw a glass bottle towards the police, hit one of the protesters instead #Louisville #LouisvilleProtests #BreonnaTaylor pic.twitter.com/uH0GhCXXRI
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) September 23, 2020
More bus stops smashed downtown #Louisville #LouisvilleProtests #BreonnaTaylor pic.twitter.com/V3Tzwxy7hS
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) September 24, 2020
State troopers out to monitor Jefferson Square as fires continue to burn in downtown Louisville #Louisville #LouisvilleProtests #BreonnaTaylor pic.twitter.com/I6ooLS4TwZ
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) September 24, 2020
All of the examples above occurred prior to the 9:00 p.m. CDT curfew that had been established by local authorities.
While Reuters reported that the gunshots emerged from a “skirmish” in which police were “heavily armed,” a live stream of the Louisville protests captured a demonstrator reporting explicitly that left-wing activists had shot at police:
Demonstrations — some of them violent, few of them lawful — have broken out in cities across the nation in response to a grand jury indictment that charged one officer with wanton endangerment, but did not charge two other officers involved in the incident leading to Taylor’s death. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron explained that Taylor’s boyfriend had opened fire first, and that the officers had knocked. One witness corroborated claims they had identified themselves as police.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
