On June 21, 2017, a motorcyclist was seen riding through a good number of health care activists who were blocking the seventh street in San Francisco, California protesting against the recent GOP health care bill. The man allegedly rode his motorcycle through a crowd of activists who were staging a die-in on the street, and narrowly missed a few of the people who were lying on the ground.
The protestors had gathered just outside the San Francisco Federal building which is at 7th and Mission streets at approximately 12:30 pm and began staging a ‘Die-In’ protest whereby a dozen or so protestors laid down on the Seventh Street so as to block traffic in the area when the scene supposedly took place. Emily Lee, the spokeswoman for the Bay Resistance group, which had organised and was performing the protest in conjunction with the Disability and Senior Action, told interviewers that the man drove up on his motorcycle while travelling the wrong way on the street. She then added that at first, everyone thought that the man was just confused or had made a wrong turn, but after it became clear that he was not going to stop and that he intended to pass through the crowd, the people who were in his pathway quickly jumped out of the way. Lee also claimed that the motorcyclist was definitely targeting the protestors but his reasons for doing so, whether political or just mental instability, was unclear at the time. The man was then reported to have turned around and began to come back through the crowd.
Federal police officers who were at the scene quickly approached the motorcyclist before he could put anyone else in harm’s way and ordered him to stop. When he appeared not to be listening, the officers drew their guns and the man immediately stopped and began following the officers’ commands. Police Officer Rober Rueca reported that the incident resulted in no injuries whatsoever and the motorcyclist has been detained but has not yet been charged with anything. While the police have not released the identity of the motorcyclist, the motorcycle he used was found out to have been registered to Jeffery Dillon of San Francisco. Mr Dillon has also been listed as an administrator for a Facebook page known as the “White Privilege Club”.
