A Queens woman was charged with reckless endangerment after she drove her sedan into a crowd of protesters in Manhattan on Friday afternoon, the NYPD said.
Kathleen Casillo, 52, of Rockaway Park was issued a desk appearance ticket for the misdemeanor charge.
Around 4 p.m. Friday, demonstrators marching against Immigration and Customs Enforcement were walking on the road on East 39th Street near Third Avenue in Murray Hill when the driver of a black sedan sped through the group, a demonstrator at the scene said.
According to the Daily News, “Casillo told police she panicked and hit the gas as protesters began banging on her car and trying to open the doors. Her 29-year-old daughter was in the car with her but not charged, police said."
"We got run over by a car," Yacine Diallo, a protester who witnessed the incident, told Gothamist Friday. "Between 5 and 10 people got hurt. Now police are trying to arrest us."
Six people were hospitalized with injuries that ranged from minor to serious but none were life-threatening, according to the FDNY.
Harlem resident Nicolle Besuden, 32, whom the Daily News identified as a protester, was also arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and obstruction of governmental administration for interfering with EMS rendering aid at the protest, police said.
(Update: Besuden said in an email Saturday that she was helping an injured friend tell first responders to give him some space, as he was becoming distressed at the number of police responding to the site. "I would never stop medical professionals from assisting an injured person," Besuden said.)
Videos posted on Twitter show the sedan driver accelerating into a small group of protesters.
After the incident, officers with the NYPD's Strategic Response Group blocked off the intersection and threatened those on the street with arrest, witnesses told Gothamist. The anti-ICE march was meant as a show of solidarity with a group of immigrant detainees at Bergen County Jail who've been on a hunger strike to demand that they await the outcome of their deportation cases at home amid the current coronavirus surge.
Researchers have recorded more than 100 vehicle-ramming incidents against protesters since demonstrations against police violence erupted this past spring across the country. In September, a pro-Trump motorist drove through a crowd of Black Lives Matter demonstrators marching through Times Square. That driver was released without charges.
