On Thursday around 5 p.m., protesters surrounded a Raleigh police car and a Honda.
Police were able to move them and both cars backed away. A short time later, protesters blocked another officer’s car on Jones Street, joining hands in a circle around it.
The officer opened the door and stepped out under their hands, walking away.
Around the same time, an unidentified man who had been at the protest much of Thursday jumped on the hood of Raleigh attorney Deborrah Newton’s car as it pulled to a Blount Street corner. Newton got out and began pulling the man’s legs as he clung to the hood, swinging at him until a second man tried to grab her from behind.
She was eventually able to drive away, and about 100 protesters marched from the scene.
Police stood by the attack on Newton’s car but did not intervene.
Newton told The News & Observer she was driving home from the grocery store, unaware of the protests, when a group stopped the car in front of her.
She honked her horn and got out to ask the police officers nearby if they could help. But when she reached them, some were standing still, another walked away from her and a third said, “We’ve got a situation.”
Deborrah Newton works remove a protester from the hood of her car at the intersection of Jones and Blount Streets on Thursday, July 2, 2020 in Raleigh, N.C, Five other protesters stopped the car initially next to the Executive Mansion, before Newton exited her car and tried to remove the man.
She said she looked and saw about 10 people on top of a Raleigh police SUV while officers were inside.
She went back to her car and the group let the car in front of her pass before a protester jumped on her hood.
“Everything I could grab, I grabbed,” she said. “I had his glasses and his hat, and I said, ”What are you going to do, come get them?”
At that point, she said, about eight officers arrived and told her to get off the sidewalk. A girl pushed her and she cut her foot but she was uninjured.
“I’m feisty,” she said. “Somebody in the back of my car was hitting it or throwing things at it, and I almost got out, but I figured I should get out of there.”
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