Guards fire on truck at Coast Guard base where federal agents had arrived
Description
Guards at a California Coast Guard station opened fire on a civilian truck as it drove toward the base gates, ignoring shouts to stop, video of the incident shows.
A handful of guards at Coast Guard Station Alameda fired at least a dozen rounds from rifles and pistols as a U-Haul truck backed toward them Thursday night. Local media captured and broadcast video of the event, which showed the truck maneuvering to point away from the gate, then backing rapidly toward the guards as voices yell for it stop.
Local media reported that two people were hit. KTVU cited police sources in reporting that the driver and a bystander were hit. In a video of the incident, at least one bystander leaps out the way as the shots ring out. There were no reports of deaths.
The gunfire came at the end of a day of protests outside the gates of the base, which sits on an island between the cities of Oakland and Alameda in the San Francisco Bay. The protests were aimed at a corps of federal agents who had arrived at the installation earlier in the day ahead of an announced blitz of federal immigration enforcement in the San Francisco area.
Protestors blocked the single road access to the base, prompting California State Patrol and other authorities to use tear gas. Local police, according to reports, had declined to disperse the crowd.
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Though Coast Guard facilities are generally protected by uniformed Coast Guard personnel, it was unclear which agency the guards who opened fire worked for.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and President Donald Trump announced Thursday night that the planned federal immigration surge had been called off. Trump cited “friends” in the region who had contacted him directly to lobby against the deployment.
“The Federal Government was preparing to ‘surge’ San Francisco, California,” Trump posted Thursday. “But friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge.”
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