When his 16-year-old daughter asked him for permission to take part in the protests against racial and social injustices in Portland in June, Justin Dunlap, a 44-year-old lighting designer, decided to join his daughter to witness the actions firsthand as part of what he described as a "democracy field trip."
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st September, 2020) When his 16-year-old daughter asked him for permission to take part in the protests against racial and social injustices in Portland in June, Justin Dunlap, a 44-year-old lighting designer, decided to join his daughter to witness the actions firsthand as part of what he described as a "democracy field trip."
"That's why I started documenting it [the protests] because my daughter wanted to go to the protests. She's 16, you know. I'm like, 'this is the democracy field trip, let's go.' People are like, 'what are you doing with your daughter down there?' I'm like, 'what do you mean? What better ways to learn about how democracy works than being down here, listening to speeches and seeing what's going on. Then I was like, 'why not share it?'" Dunlap told Sputnik in a phone interview.
As Dunlap began to live stream the protests on a regular basis on Facebook, he was in absolute shock when he captured the deadly shooting that took place on Saturday in downtown Portland, where one of the counter-protesters supporting US President Donald Trump was shot and killed.
"I didn't even have my protective goggles on. I didn't have my gas masks on. There was no sign anything like that was gonna take place," he said.
After live-streaming a peaceful protest in Troutdale, which is about 17 miles east of Portland, in the afternoon, Dunlap returned to downtown Portland about 8 p.m. in the evening on Saturday and started his live streaming feed on Facebook.
About 18 minutes after his live stream started, Dunlap was about to cross an intersection when he heard people shouting on the opposite side of the streets.
"Hey, we got some right here. We got a couple right here." people could be heard screaming.
Dunlap turned his smartphone toward where the voices came from.
In his footage, a man wearing a black T-shirt could be seen walking towards a man in a white T-shirt before raising his right hand to disperse what looked to be a canister of mace. The man in a white T-shirt could be seen firing two quick shots as soon as the mace-like substance was fired.
"Knock it off!" someone could be heard shouting before the man in the white T-shirt fled the scene quickly after firing the shots. The man in the black T-shirt turned around and took a few steps before collapsing to the ground.
A video from the YouTube channel named "Stumptown Matters" captured what happened next.
"Are you Okay? Jay! No!" a man wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans turned the victim around and started to make chest compressions on him. A couple of volunteer medics rushed to the victim and one female medic tried to check the victim's conditions before the man in the white T-shirt pushed her away.
"Get the f... out of here!" the man in the white T-shirt shouted.
The victim has been identified as Aaron "Jay" Danielson who is a member of the Patriot Prayer group that has been staging counter-protests in support of Trump. The man in white T-shirt who tried to revive the victim has been identified as Chandler Pappas, who is also a member of the Patriot Prayer.
After pushing the first female medic away, Pappas allowed a male medic to check Danielson's conditions while trying to remove his clothes to find out where he was wounded.
"He pushed my other field medic who had the trauma gears. She had the scissors that we needed to cut open the clothes. He pushed her straight to the ground. I managed to get close enough to take his [the victim's] pulse. He was still with us. The friend had started chest compressions, which in my eyes was crazy because he was still breathing. You don't start compressions until he stops breathing. It was a battle. I was trying to find where his wounds were to evaluate his condition. But the dude [Pappas] wouldn't move his hands. He was doing compressions even before we could identify where the wound was. It was utter chaos," Matt Robbins, who was the male medic who checked on the victim briefly on the scene, told Sputnik in a phone interview.
Robbins and the female medic were with a group of volunteer medics who supported the social justice protests, which could have led to Pappas refusing assistance from them.
"I was in the army and I have done medical training. I work as a security officer at my day job. So I'm CPR [cardiopulmonary resuscitation] certified. We were like, 'dude, we're here to help!' But he just wasn't trusting us because we were in black. I think he thought we were in the opposite side of what he believed in. But we didn't care about that. We were there to help," Robbins said.
Less than one minute after the shooting took place and before the volunteer medics could take out their gear to treat the victim, police officers arrived at the scene and cleared everyone away, including the volunteer medics.
"By the time the friend [Pappas] got off him [Danielson] and allowed us to start evaluating him, the Portland police came and shoved us. And said, 'we're real medics.' I saw three police officers went down, one with a flashlight and two started to take his clothing off. Things we would have done had we been able to get there and do what we're trained to do, without interference from the friend," Robbins said.
In a video interview one day after the shooting took place, Pappas argued that the protesters targeted them specifically.
"We have a first amendment that protects our natural right. For whatever reason, it seems the opposition thinks we can't do that. They have been attacking us for years and for decades in the grand scheme. Very heavily in Portland especially in the last 95 days. Last night, it escalated to the point that they executed my partner [Danielson]. They hunted him down. They hunted us down. They recognized our patriot prayer hats," he said in the video.
Pappas said there was no confrontation that led up to the shooting as both Danielson and he had never met the guy who opened fire.
However, a reporter named Zane Sparling from the local Portland Tribune happened to have interviewed both Pappas and Danielson a few hours before the shooting on Saturday afternoon.
Pappas and Danielson were preparing protective gear, paintball guns and knives before taking part in the pro-Trump rally in Portland on Saturday.
"I'm here to stop people from assaulting these people," Pappas was quoted as saying while holding a paintball gun.
According to Dunlap, who had been taking his teenage daughter to take part in the protests in Portland since June, tensions escalated quickly after August 22 when Trump supporters started to bring weapons during their counter protests.
"At a point, when Trump supporters started waving guns at protests. On August 22, there was a gun brought out by a Proud Boy [a far-right organization], a Trump supporter, in downtown Portland. And a week later, a person is dead. It's easy to draw a line between the events. 87 days of peaceful protests up until last Saturday. And then on day 95, somebody got shot," he said.
Both Dunlap and Robbins said Trump supporters had been shooting paintballs and bear maces at the protesters as their caravan drove through downtown Portland on Saturday.
Dunlap said his wife became very worried about the escalating violence and wouldn't allow him to continue to live stream the protests in Portland.
"I'm definitely gonna get back out there as soon as my wife allows me to. She said, 'No, it's not safe. I'm worried about you,'" he said.
The Oregonian, a local newspaper, has identified the suspect in the deadly shooting as Michael Reinoehl, a 48-year-old local snowboarder who had been taking part in the protests since the end of May.
According to an Instagram account that appeared to belong to Reinoehl, he has been taking part in the protests in support of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement on a regular basis.
One day before the deadly shooting took place in downtown Portland, Reinoehl appeared in the live stream feed of Patriot Prayer's founder Joey Gibson, who was at a counter-protest in Camas, Washington.
While Gibson was talking to a BLM supporter, Reinoehl could be seen standing in the background and trying to reason with a group of Patriot Prayer members who hold flags in support of Trump.
Danielson, the victim, looked to have been taking part in the same rally with Gibson, as he appeared in the video about ten minutes before Reinoehl's dialogue with the Patriot Prayer members.
According to Dunlap's footage, he walked passed a group of BLM supporters about five minutes before the deadly shooting took place. Reinoehl could be seen standing among the group of BLM supporters before the group decided to walk down the street towards the Multnomah County Justice Center, which was the main protest site in the city.
The footage showed that Reinoehl walked passed Dunlap about 1.5 minutes before the shooting started.
Dunlap believed the shooting was a coincidental encounter that turned deadly because of the tensions that built up throughout the day amid provocations from Trump supporters.
