An incensed racist with knives strapped to his arms tried to mow down people at a small Black Lives Matter protest in Queens on Tuesday — and the madman's actions were captured on multiple videos.
No more than a dozen young people were peacefully protesting in Whitestone with several signs hung up on the fence above the Cross Island Parkway at Clintonville Street when the middle-aged white man pulled over, jumped out of his SUV, and ran down the sidewalk with blades attached to his arm, according to witness Arianna Agudo who posted the video to social media under the username Aria Tsukino.
“This is how anti-protestors are handling this situation. THIS MAN HAD 4 KNIVES TIED UP ON HIS ARM AND WAS TRYING TO STAB THIS KIDS, AND THEN HE GOT UP ON HIS CAR AND GOT ON THE SIDEWALK AND TRIED TO RUN OVER THIS PEOPLE, PEOPLE WHO ARE LESS THAN 21 YEARS OLD!” Agudo wrote on Instagram.
The hate-filled man then jumped back in his car, made a sharp U-turn, and drove up on the sidewalk, hitting the gas as the protestors fled in terror, as the video shows.
Agudo told the Queens Eagle that the violent altercation started when the man began arguing with the protestors about police violence and racism, and then accused one of them of throwing something at his car.
“The kids [were] just calmly protesting by just placing signs and posters, all of the sudden the guy started insulting them and the kids just started talking back defending their beliefs,” Agudo told the Eagle.
The racist man — behind the wheel of an SUV whose plate has racked up eight violations since 2018, including two for speeding in a school zone — then drove off screaming at protestors, "I'll kill you, I'll fucking kill you."
A spokeswoman for the NYPD said on Wednesday that police are investigating the incident as "menacing," but that no arrests have been made.
And nearly a full 24 hours after the incident, and 18 hours after Streetsblog first asked about it, police issued a full statement, which still lacked context about the man attempting to run over protestors with his car:
"There is a complaint report on file for menacing incident that occurred on Tuesday, June 2,2020 at 1545 hours in the vicinity of Clintonville Street and Cross Island Parkway within the confines of the 109 Precinct. A 23-year-old male reported to police that and unidentified individual exited a vehicle with a sharp object and displayed it to a crowd that was peacefully protesting and fled in a vehicle described as a gray SUV mercury. There were no reported injuries as a result, no arrests at this time and the investigation is ongoing," said Det. Denise Moroney in an e-mail.
The Queens District Attorney declined to comment, deferring questions and comments to the NYPD.
Local Council Member Paul Vallone condemned the attack and said he is working with police.
In the same neighborhood, at what looks like the exact same intersection just one night before, another white man was also caught on video ripping down Black Lives Matter signs and calling the neighborhood a “white town," the Post reported.
President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Whitestone in 2016 with 52 percent of the vote, one of only five neighborhoods in the president's hometown borough that he won.
Tuesday night's incident is reminiscent of the killing of 32-year-old Heather Heyer by neo-Nazi James Alex Fields, 21, who drove his car into a crowd of counter-demonstrators at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, fatally striking Heyer.
