Three people were arrested, and two police officers received minor injuries in a protest on late Monday, following a vigil for a Georgia Tech fourth-year student that was shot to death by campus police.
The gathering lasted about an hour or a half. But 20 minutes later, a group separated from it and started chanting, marching, and even confronting the campus police headquarters. A police car from the campus was lit on fire after someone crashed its windshield, and many students were pinned to the ground with their hands cuffed – according to videos taken by the same students at the crime scene.
The vigil was held on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, two days after the 21-year-old Scout Schultz – who was a leader in the school’s LGBT community – called 911 for seeing a suspicious armed individual who might have been intoxicated, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The campus officials have not identified the police who killed Scout; they even refused to give any information about it for now.
Schultz called 911 saying that a possibly intoxicated white male, with long blond hair, wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans, was holding a knife or a gun. However, according to a security video, the only person that was holding a knife was Schultz himself. The officer told him many times to drop the weapon, but he slowly approached to the police officer until he was shot to death.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation latter informed about three suicide notes found in Schultz’s dorm room.
The protest turned violent at the end of the vigil
Around 50 people attended and marched in the streets of the Georgia Tech. The following protest grouped around 12 people chanting “Justice now” and “This is not OK,” showing a banner saying “Protect LGBTQ” – according to the doctoral student at Tech, Xincheng Shen, who attended the earlier vigil. Three of them were later captured and charged with inciting a riot and interference with government property, Tech said.
When Sheen saw another group gathering to the campus police headquarters, she realized that it was “going to be very bad” after all the other officers that arrived that moment. “I saw a couple of students forced to the ground handcuffed. Police were not arresting everyone,” Shen said. “They were only after certain people.”
After the two groups divided, the fireworks suddenly stopped, and nobody knew who set them off, according to Shen. However, he then saw a person with its face covered, jumping on the police car before it broke the windshield and set the vehicle on fire. There are a few videos with this event recorded that are already on social media.
Police arrested Vincent Castillenti, Jacob David Wilson, and Cassandra Monden
The three people arrested on Monday’s violent protest were later identified by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, Tracy Flanagan.
Vincent Castillenti, of Decatur, is facing two counts of aggravated assault on an officer and two counts of willful obstruction of law enforcement officers.
Jacob David Wilson, of Atlanta, is facing two counts of aggravated assault against a peace officer and three counts of criminal trespass, according to Flanagan.
Andrew Xavier Monden, of Atlanta, is facing charges of interference with government property and inciting rioting. However, Georgia Tech identified the third person as Cassandra Monden.
Source: CNN