A man shot near Seattle’s “Capitol Hill Organized Protest” zone, or CHOP, said those who attacked him did so for racial reasons.
Dejuan Young was shot on Saturday just hours after another shooting in the CHOP area during which one teenager was killed and three others were wounded. Young says he was attacked just a block away from where the first shooting took place.
“So basically I was shot by, I’m not sure if they’re ‘Proud Boys’ or KKK,” he told KIRO 7 on Tuesday. “But the verbiage that they said was, ‘Hold this n—–’ and shot me.”
He said the force of the shot pushed him down onto the hood of a car.
“And they stood over top of me and continued to fire,” he said. “I tried to protect myself and got shot in the arm, and they got away.”
A former nurse and several CHOP volunteer medics took him to a nearby hospital in a personal vehicle. Seattle medics had originally planned to take Young to the hospital but couldn’t because they were waiting for a police escort that never ended up arriving.
“I understand everybody’s going to say, ‘Oh, it was the CHAZ zone, and y’all asked for the police not to be there, so don’t act like y’all need them now,’” Young said. “But technically, I was outside that area. I was in Seattle streets. So what’s the excuse now?”
The CHOP zone has been the source of national attention since it was first established earlier this month. In response to the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody in late May, protesters cordoned off several blocks of the city.
Despite the insistence of some that the zone has remained largely peaceful, several shootings and violent incidents have taken place in or near the area in recent days, with first responders unable to attend to victims properly. Typically, when ambulances are sent to respond to an emergency, they have to wait until police have cleared the scene as safe, which has proven impossible in CHOP because police aren’t allowed inside.
Seattle’s Mayor Jenny Durkan has shifted perspectives on the CHOP zone, originally telling CNN’s Chris Cuomo that, “We could have the summer of love!” The mayor said on Monday, however, that police would begin to take back the area “peacefully and in the near future.”
Protesters in Washington, D.C., likely inspired by what took place in Seattle, have attempted to set up what’s been called the “Black House Autonomous Zone” in recent days. Their attempts to eradicate police from the area have not been as successful.
