A white man pulled a gun at a Florida protest. Black men took the blame.
A white man pulled a gun at a Florida protest. Black men took the blame.
Tampa Bay Times, 1/28/2021
(This text is from an Tampa Bay Times E-mail summarizing the article) In September, a white man named Laurence Davis came to a St. Petersburg Black Lives Matter protest with a drink in his hand and a gun in the back of his waistband. For weeks, the racial justice protests sweeping the country had grated on him, his Facebook page showed.
One post linked to a video of a man shooting a Black Lives Matter protester during a tussle. I would have done the same, he wrote.
As the march reached a boiling point, he ran up to protesters looking to disrupt them. He shoved one so hard, she went to the hospital for head trauma. Then, he drew a gun on a Black protester.
When an officer arrived, Davis was not stopped. He pushed the officers arm and walked back into the crowd, shoving others. All of it was captured on video.
But Davis will face no consequences for his actions that night. Instead, police blamed two Black protesters for starting things, based on blurry images.
Tampa Bay Times reporter Kavitha Surana reviewed the investigation and tracked down video and eyewitnesses from the night.
Here is what she found.