Car drives through Indiana demonstrators protesting against alleged attempted lynching

A car in Bloomington, Ind., on Tuesday struck demonstrators protesting an alleged attempted lynching captured on video earlier in the week, and the driver has yet to be identified.

The red Toyota was filmed accelerating despite a woman being directly in front of it and a man on one side. Both the man and the woman fell from the car after it made a sharp turn, according to Bloomington-area NBC affiliate WTHR. The woman was knocked unconscious and taken to the hospital with a head laceration, while the man received scrapes to his arms, according to the outlet.

“The car just speeds right into her,” Rodney Root, who took the video, told WTHR. “She goes up on the hood and a guy is close by.  You can see it in the video shortly, a guy tries to stop it and he’s holding on. I’m not sure how long he stayed on the car but the car went full speed.”

Witnesses told the station a passenger in the car had stepped out and thrown a scooter that had been left in the road, prompting the woman to attempt to intervene by putting her hands on the hood of the car, at which point the car accelerated.

Neither the driver nor the passenger have been detained, according to NBC News.

The protests were in response to a video posted by Vauhxx Booker, who sits on the Monroe County Human Rights Commission, of himself at Lake Monroe, a reservoir near Bloomington.

The footage shows Booker being pinned against a tree and attacked by several white men, one of whom he claims said “get a noose.” The men beat him and later released him after friends intervened, according to Booker. He said if it wasn’t for other white people who insisted they release him, he believes he would have been killed, as the word “lynch” was allegedly openly suggested by the attackers. 

Since widespread protests against racial inequality began in late May following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, several cars have driven into protesting crowds, including police vehicles in New York and Richmond, Va., as well as an incident in Seattle where a motorist driving onto a closed highway killed a 24-year-old woman named Summer Taylor.