During a Los Angeles-based protest Saturday afternoon, The Flash and Vampire Diaries actor Kendrick Sampson was hit by rubber bullets fired by police officers. The gathering – protesting the death of George Floyd – remains an active event as of this writing, gathering thousands of protestors in Hollywood. Early Saturday evening, Sampson went on Instagram live to reveal the news that he’d been shot with the rubber bullets.
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“They shot me four times already. I already got hurt and I got hit with a baton,” Sampson said during the stream. “Y’all ain’t see no police f—ing up white folks when they took guns to the statehouse,” he said. “Y’all didn’t see police attacking white folks, beating em up with batons, shooting them with rubber bullets when they brought guns to f—ing state houses. We came up here with no weapons, with masks.… And we’re the ones who are not peaceful.”
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A user on Twitter then shared video of a CNN report where Sampson can be seen in the background, being hit by a police baton. This particular event took place in West Hollywood during a demonstration set up by Sampson’s Build Power initiative and the Black Live Matter Movement.
It’s one of the dozens of events taking place across the country this weekend after Floyd, 46, died earlier this week after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for over eight minutes. The officer in question, Derek Chauvin, has since been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
You’ll see Kendrick Sampson in Black, on the front lines being hit repeatedly by a cop with a baton pic.twitter.com/Iq8SbB6v76
— TEE “AIN’T BLACK” FRANKLIN IS GOLDEN (@MizTeeFranklin) May 30, 2020
“We did an event together — peaceful, powerful, talking about defunding the police, talking about building power in our communities and what that really looks like. That’s what we were doing. We marched to the intersection at Fairfax, we were there for a bit. We closed it out with a chant,” Sampson added.
“I wanted to make sure that folks weren’t getting brutalized because that’s what we do, we look out for each other. So I started a platform to make sure that people saw what was going on.”
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