Chemical irritants and flashbangs filled the air Saturday in the aftermath of a federal agent fatally shooting Alex Pretti.
MINNEAPOLIS — In the moments after another fatal shooting in Minneapolis at the hands of a federal agent, Eat Street turned chaotic.
Federal agents used chemical irritants and flash bangs to back the crowd up. Some agents used the gas to stop protesters from following them as they left.
As those agents left the scene, some demonstrators followed them and were met with clouds of tear gas. Some businesses nearby opened their doors to let people escape the gas.
“We don’t often get put in those positions, and so if you do, you kind of just rise up to the challenge,” Marisa Brown, owner of The Copper Hen, said.
The restaurant was one of several businesses to open up its space to act as a warming center, bathroom, donation hub and place to get food.
“A nurse showed up right away and saying, ‘Hey.’ I mean, really, within 30 minutes of everything happening, saying, ‘Hey, can I come in and start like a triage unit,’ essentially,” Brown said. “And we’re like, ‘yeah, come on in.'”
“I mean, again, just doing what we can do, filling coffee, filling water, people coming in to get their, that had, you know, had been tear gassed or maced.”
Donations have poured in. Brown says they’ve had people reach out from all over the world.
“We’ve been in contact with some local organizations to see how we can donate those that are still left over from here,” Brown said.
Pimento Jamaican Kitchen also opened its doors to the crowds. Michael Wilson, executive culinary director, says they opened as a community space on Saturday.
“That’s why we chose this place to be headquartered, for people to come in, get solace when they had gas out yesterday,” he said. “We told everybody to come in regardless, if you made a purchase or not, if you couldn’t afford a meal yesterday, guess what? We fed you anyway.”
Wilson says they also had many community members come in to help work to keep the space going.
“We have so many people who decide to come in clean tables, take out garbage,” he said. “The fact that we have community helping community makes it easy for us to do business.”
Kindness amongst the chaos, as neighbors helped neighbors.
“That man could have saved tens of thousands of lives in his lifetime, but they chose to have a moment,” Wilson said. “So, hopefully, they take this moment to kind of figure it out and get them up out of here so we can get back to business as usual.”
