White Indiana Residents Bring Assault Weapons To BLM Protest To Intimidate Peaceful Demonstration
A Black Lives Matter protest in Crown Point, Indiana is getting some attention after a line of heavily-armed white residents attempted to intimidate peaceful demonstrators.
Earlier this week, a group of mostly college students had reportedly just finished marching and took a back alley bike path to get to their cars. During their journey, they were greeted by a lineup of at least a dozen white men and women – all carrying assault weapons and staring down the students.
Indiana is an open carry state, so protesters with licenses are able to carry legally in public. The question is why they were even there in the first place? The protesters reportedly weren’t even chanting or speaking, and their prior protest had been peaceful.
According to a tweet by protester Bella Gomez, her and others felt unsafe walking by the armed people. “A video from when we took the BIKE TRAIL back to our cars after police advised us to because of the amount of people standing by the street with their bats and guns,” she captioned a video she posted of the situation. “These men followed us- if the cops weren’t there i genuinely don’t know what would have happened.”
According to TMZ, Cedric Cashetta, one of the protesters walking back, says it was the police who suggested protesters take the bike path in order to avoid a longer and more contentious route back to their vehicles.
Cashetta says he and the group of demonstrators made sure to keep calm in the situation because he believed some of the armed white people were trying to get reactions out of them.
