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racism

White men ran over two black women and smashed up a store in Lincoln

A white man hit two black women with his truck last night in Lincoln.

Both women were injured. One is suffering from a concussion and internal injuries and the other is suffering from multiple contusions from being hit and dragged by the truck.

Seeing Red was able to speak to both women, Lacretia Contreras and Jaida Graves, on Saturday afternoon. Jaida describes the events that occurred before the video begins. Lacretia was bumped twice by the truck and climbed on the hood to avoid being hit a third time. The driver of the truck accelerated and braked to toss Lacretia from the hood. Once she was on the ground you can see the driver reverse and hit them both before driving away. They told us that they attempted to file a police report but were told by officers that they couldn’t because the officers did not have time to take it. The women were treated and released from the hospital and are recovering at home.

Two videos capture the moments after he first struck a protester. The first shows the truck driver accelerating and braking, then reversing:

The second shows people rushing to the site and the driver backing up and plowing into the people rendering aid.


Video showing a pickup truck hitting a woman, reversing, and hitting her and another woman again.

Witnesses report the man was pulled over by police and issued a ticket, part of which was captured by a second video.

Video showing the pickup driver interacting with police.

Although officers apparently did not have time to take a report about the white man who deliberately assaulted two women with his truck, the police did have time to take a report about the windows that were broken at MetroPCS at 2615 O St. That report states that an item was thrown through the windows. However, photos taken by the Lincoln Journal Star’s Justin Wan show a motorcyclist smashing the windows with his fist and another white man smashing them with a board. Scroll all the way down this LJS story for Wan’s excellent photographs, including ones that capture the white men smashing windows.

Police report stating that an item thrown through Metro PCS windows caused $15,000 in damage.

When questioned by the press early Saturday morning about the hit and run that apparently touched off the violence, Chief of Police Bliemeiser replied that it is part of their “ongoing investigation” of the various events of the night. However, by the formal press conference Saturday afternoon, the incident still only appeared as a glancing reference in Bliemeiser’s briefing and no press inquired about it. The majority of time was spent on police injuries and property damage.

This incident replicates the same basic dynamic that caused the protests in the first place: white people violently assault black people, and police refuse to hold the white men legally accountable in any way. Instead, the focus of the police and the media is on damage to white-owned property, describing this as “violence” and condemning this (implied black) violence as unacceptable in a civil society.

All those pleading for a return to “peace” should consider what that means to people of color who are regularly subjected to police violence and violence from white people in the course of their daily lives. Asking for a return to the status quo is asking us to return to a kind of violence that our society keeps comfortably out of the press and out of the police blotter because violence to black bodies isn’t worth getting too worked up about. It is not asking for peace. If we truly want peace, we first have to attend to justice for the black men and women in our community. As a modest first step, we suggest prosecuting white men who deliberately run over black women with their trucks.

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