By Thomas Thorpecken
I did three sketches of the protest at Alligator Alcatraz. I am posting the third sketch first because it portrays the most horrific incident of the protest. A news cameraman is sitting up shortly after having been hit by a blue Jeep and having his left leg run over.
After completing a sketch, Stella P. Arbelaéz Tascón and I were walking along the main road on the shoulder. The many parked cars on the grass and dirt, forced people into the shoulder of the road to walk. There were probably more reporters at than protestors. Most protestors were against the fence in front of the entrance to the detention facility. The detention center was thrown up in the dead of night on an abandoned airstrip. A few protestors were pro-Trump. One little girl wrapped herself in a Trump, MAGA election flag.
I was walking behind Stella on the shoulder of the road when I noticed a blue jeep drifting towards us. It was coasting at maybe 5 miles per hour. It moved straight for Stella, who slapped the front wheel of the jeep and stepped aside. There was a parked car to Stella’s left limiting her movement. I also stepped aside into the grass between two parked vehicles. A reporter, who worked for EFE, was looking through a camera. He had his back to the oncoming traffic. The front bumper of the blue jeep hit his hips causing his back to arch and then he fell forward. He must have turned as he he fell, trying t look back at what had hit him. I then saw the thick knobby front tire of the jeep run over his leg. The jeep kept rolling forward until it had his entire lower leg pinned down up to his knee. I was right next to him as he fell and had his leg crushed. I just shouted out, “Jesus Christ!” The woman behind the wheel, stopped, then slowly backed up. She was horrified and clueless. a young woman was seated beside her in the passenger seat. Part of me thought back to a comment Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had said “If you hit one of these people, that is their fault” I don’t think the woman ran the reporter over intentionally. She was rubbernecking, and not looking at where she was going. She drove off the road into the shoulder.
Stella was interviewed by police as an eye witness. The image of his leg being pinned under the tire will forever live in my mind. Had Stella and I not stepped aside fast enough, we too would have been hit. After talking to the police officer, Stella then went to the passenger window of the jeep and told the woman behind the wheel, that “We are all human and we all make mistakes”. Stella knew it was not intentional, and she reassured the woman that it would all be OK.
I had been less forgiving. I heard the driver say to the passenger that the man had been in the road. I shouted to her that she had run off the road into the shoulder. He was clearly in the shoulder of the road. The fact is, the woman never saw him. Se was probably reading protestor sign on the opposite side of the road rather than looking at where she was going. Once the cameraman fell, she could not see over the hood of her jeep. When the woman hit him, her wheel was on the shoulder of the road and when she backed up the tire went back on the road but still on the white line.
The reporter could not get up. An ambulance eventually came from inside Alligator Alcatraz. Paramedics helped lift him up on a gurney and roll him into the ambulance. He was then driven into Mosquito Alcatraz.