Ex city council candidate shoots at BLM demonstrator in video

8

View
comments

This is the shocking moment a protester was shot and left in critical condition during violent clashes between armed militia and demonstrators trying to tear down a conquistador statue in New Mexico.

In video footage obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com, former Albuquerque city council candidate Steven Baca is seen allegedly firing four shots at demonstrator Scott Williams during a wild brawl on Monday night.

Police officers in Albuquerque arrested Baca, 31, shortly after the incident and charged him with shooting Williams.

Williams had been seeking the removal of the ‘La Jornada’ sculpture, which depicts a 16th-century Spanish colonial governor notorious for massacring natives, when the brawl erupted.

Baca was charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, according to a criminal complaint.

In the video footage Baca is seen allegedly drawing a handgun after he was chased down by a group of protesters and pushed to the ground around 8pm.

Baca, wearing shorts and a blue t-shirt, was being wrestled to the ground by two protesters, one a woman, before fellow demonstrator Williams ran in and picked up a skateboard hitting Baca hard over the head with it.

Williams, it’s believed, is heard on the footage screaming: ‘I’m gonna f**king kill you.’

Baca, while recoiling from the strike to his head, pulled his gun and shot at Williams four times, hitting him in the torso, the footage allegedly shows.

It appeared that Williams was shot in the back and blood can be seen gushing from his wounds in the disturbing video.

The shooting sent members of the 300-strong crowd running for cover as screams rang out and one person yelled, ‘Somebody got shot.’

Another yelled at Baca: ‘What the f**k is wrong with you.’

Several protesters surrounded injured Williams, who was wearing a black hoodie and backpack, and rendered first aid while another person is heard calling 911 on the video. It’s understood one was an EMT who was with the protest.

Baca is seen crouching on the ground, in apparent shock at what had happened, and a group of armed militia from the New Mexico Civil Guard, carrying rifles and wearing camouflage uniforms, formed a barrier around him as chaos ensued.

It was not clear whether Baca was a member of the militia who tried to protect the statue as protesters attempted to pull it down.

Phone videos showed Baca pushing back protesters in front of the sculpture and throwing down a woman before backing away and using pepper spray against oncoming demonstrators.

According to the criminal complaint citing the charges against him, Baca scuffled with protesters and was hit with a skateboard before he drew a gun and fired.

One witness, who asked not to be named, told DailyMail.com: ‘The man in the blue shirt was protecting a few of the “pro” Oñate statue people and when it began to get heated he left the scene.

‘But a mob began to follow him to his car and yell in his direction. As they approached, he took out his pepper spray and warned them not to come closer. They advanced on him and he discharged the pepper spray.

‘The crowd kept following him and he warned them again to stay back. Three individuals proceeded to attack him by tackling him, and hitting him in the head with skateboards.’

Baca and members of the militia group were taken into custody by responding police officers.

‘The heavily armed individuals who flaunted themselves at the protest, calling themselves a “civil guard,” were there for one reason: To menace protesters, to present an unsanctioned show of unregulated force,’ New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a statement.

Baca, son of a former Bernalillo County Sheriff, ran unsuccessfully for City Council in 2019, calling city leadership soft on crime and criticizing terms of a federal agreement imposing restrictions on law enforcement.

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said the city would remove the sculpture of Juan de Oñate for ‘public safety’ after another statute of the colonial governor was taken down on Monday in Alcalde, New Mexico.

He wrote on Twitter: ‘The shooting tonight was a tragic, outrageous and unacceptable act of violence and it has no place in our city. Our diverse community will not be deterred by acts meant to divide or silence us.’

Oñate is seen by some as a hero who led the Spanish colonization of New Mexico and reviled by others for enslaving the ancestors of Native Americans and ordering that men who survived an uprising at Acoma Pueblo have one foot cut off.

The protest outside the Albuquerque Museum began peacefully before activists took a pickaxe to the ‘La Jornada’ sculpture.

Members of the heavily armed New Mexico Civil Guard then stepped in to protect the statue.

Before the violence erupted around 300 demonstrators had gathered in Tiguex Park at around 6pm to listen to speeches by indigenous activists before marching to the statue.

Anti-racism protesters venting anger over last month’s death of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis, have taken to destroying statutes honoring the US Civil War’s Confederacy, as well as sculptures of imperialists, conquistadors and other historical figures associated with subjugation of indigenous populations around the world.