A white nationalist pulled his gun out on anti-racism protesters and opened fire into a crowd and in the direction of a black man who had an improvised flamethrower, all while appearing to yell a racial slur for good measure. While all of this happened, police did nothing.
In the video, posted by the ACLU of Virginia, a man in a sleeveless shirt, some type of tactical vest and a bandanna is seen walking through the crowd at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., on Aug. 12, only to pass Corey Long, a black man whose image went viral after a photo was taken showing wielding a makeshift flamethrower.
From another perspective, we see this gun-wielding supremacist stop in his tracks, turn around and appear to yell, “Hey, nigger,” before pointing his gun in Long’s direction. He then cocks his gun and fires off a single shot into the crowd before walking off.
As he walks away and the video pans out, police officers are seen a few feet away, apparently unconcerned and unmoving.
“We all heard it and ran—I know damn well they heard it,” Rosia Parker, a community activist in Charlottesville, told the New York Times. “They never moved.”
Corrine Geller, a spokesperson for the Virginia State Police, claimed that troopers did not hear the shot because it was “muffled by the loud volume of the crowd yelling and chanting, drums and music.”
“Had any one of our troopers witnessed that incident, they would have immediately acted, just as they did for the other four arrests made during the weekend,” Geller added. (Right. Because they were so on point that weekend, as we all know.)
Anyway, eventually someone was arrested for that insanity. Richard Wilson Preston, 52, was arrested Saturday (this Saturday, mind you), the Daily Progress reports. Preston is currently in custody at the Baltimore County Detention Center in Towson, Md.
Preston’s arrest came shortly after an arrest was also finally made in the brutal beating of Deandre Harris. Daniel Borden, 18, was arrested Friday and charged with malicious wounding in that incident. Alex Michael Ramos, 33, is also facing the same charge in Harris’ attack, although he is not in custody and is currently wanted by the Charlottesville police
Read more at the New York Times and the Daily Progress.