The accumulated evidence flatly contradicts what Portland’s police chief told the public and city council staff in the days after the attack: that the gunman, 43-year-old Ben Smith, had opened fire only after he had been confronted by “armed protesters”.
That false characterization of the unarmed victims as aggressors, which was repeated in dozens of local and national news reports, remains uncorrected on the website of the Portland police bureau (PPB) even today, as the survivors mark the second anniversary of Smith murdering their friend, June Knightly.
The attack took place on 19 February 2022 before a march in north-east Portland to demand justice for two young Black men killed by police officers in Minneapolis, Daunte Wright and Amir Locke.
Footage from a helmet camera worn by another volunteer, Dajah Beck, shows that Smith appeared intent on drawing the women into a physical confrontation, daring them to “make” him leave.
As Smith spun around, shouting: “Fuck you!” Knightly, who was tall but walked with a cane and had lost her long hair to a round of chemotherapy, stepped between him and Deg and demanded that he leave.
It would later emerge that Smith had railed against antifascists in rightwing Telegram chats and that he had posted a comment on the YouTube channel of the anti-antifascist blogger Andy Ngo a month before the attack.
The original article contains 1,743 words, the summary contains 223 words. Saved 87%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The accumulated evidence flatly contradicts what Portland’s police chief told the public and city council staff in the days after the attack: that the gunman, 43-year-old Ben Smith, had opened fire only after he had been confronted by “armed protesters”.
That false characterization of the unarmed victims as aggressors, which was repeated in dozens of local and national news reports, remains uncorrected on the website of the Portland police bureau (PPB) even today, as the survivors mark the second anniversary of Smith murdering their friend, June Knightly.
The attack took place on 19 February 2022 before a march in north-east Portland to demand justice for two young Black men killed by police officers in Minneapolis, Daunte Wright and Amir Locke.
Footage from a helmet camera worn by another volunteer, Dajah Beck, shows that Smith appeared intent on drawing the women into a physical confrontation, daring them to “make” him leave.
As Smith spun around, shouting: “Fuck you!” Knightly, who was tall but walked with a cane and had lost her long hair to a round of chemotherapy, stepped between him and Deg and demanded that he leave.
It would later emerge that Smith had railed against antifascists in rightwing Telegram chats and that he had posted a comment on the YouTube channel of the anti-antifascist blogger Andy Ngo a month before the attack.
The original article contains 1,743 words, the summary contains 223 words. Saved 87%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!