Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police are investigating an incident involving a member of the People’s Convoy potentially striking a pedestrian and possibly breaking her leg in two places following a confrontation Sunday afternoon in D.C. proper.
There aren’t a lot of hard facts in this report yet, so we intend to tread lightly. Here’s what the Daily Beast has about the incident:
According to an incident report obtained and reviewed by The Daily Beast on Monday, Dupont Circle resident Kerry Lynn Bedard told D.C. police she was on the west side of the 1600 block of Connecticut Ave NW “when [the convoy member] struck her with his vehicle and drove on top of her right ankle.”
For his part, the convoy member, Donald Bryan Thomas II of Butler, Ohio, who was driving a silver BMW 550i plastered with stickers like “TRUCKERS RULE!!! MSM LIES,” claimed to police that he was merely “driving forward slowly when [Bedard] walked into the street and in front of his vehicle while yelling and then laid down in the roadway.” Thomas couldn’t be reached for comment on Monday evening.
Witnesses also reported Bedard’s story as accurate; Thomas was stopped when Bedard walked between vehicles and Thomas may have hit the gas to nudge her (a completely and totally stupid, reckless, dangerous and illegal move). He then blared on his horn while Bedard lay in the street.
While People’s Convoy members support the Thomas’ claim that Bedard laid on the ground in front of the vehicle with no contact, Bedard told the Beast she has two broken bones in her leg from the incident. It’s a detail that could easily be verified or debunked by police and would certainly point towards the BMW driver as the aggressor should it prove true. From the Beast:
“I have two witnesses that saw that he [Thomas] was at a standstill for quite a while, and the convoy was not moving,” she said, “while trying to get his attention to open the window,” all in an attempt to broker a conversation about not disrupting a “peaceful neighborhood.”
Listen, we all love to hold up traffic to say our piece, but cars should never become weapons. It’s a little too easy to feel safe and removed from your fellow humans while sitting behind the wheel of a 4,000+ pound vehicle facing down an elderly lady mad that you are disrupting her home with your antics. But we certainly can’t discount someone overblowing an attack from a right-wing protester, as there have certainly been fake-outs before. This scenario seems to have more witnesses accounts however, and it happened in broad daylight.
We will definitely keep an eye on this story and update as it develops.