A Congressional candidate was shot with a rubber bullet on Thursday while interviewing demonstrators gathered in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, in an incident that was captured on camera.
In a video that has been uploaded to Facebook, Erin Schrode, a 25-year-old activist who is running for Congress in California, can be heard interviewing a protestor about his opposition to the pipeline on the grounds that it cuts through sacred native lands and will threaten the Standing Rock Sioux nation’s sole water source when the sound of a gunshot ripples through the air and the camera jolts violently as Schrode screams out in pain.
Though the shooter cannot be seen as the shot came from behind Schrode’s back, she told the New York Daily News she turned around to see an officer still pointing the barrel of his rubber bullet gun at her.
“I was standing innocently onshore, not making any aggressive gestures, never exchanging a single word with the police who fired at my lower back from their boat. ” Schrode wrote on Facebook. “I was shot at pointblank range, dozens were maced and pepper sprayed in the face, hundreds faced freezing waters.”
After months of protests, tensions between law enforcement and the thousands who have gathered in North Dakota to oppose construction of the pipeline have boiled over into increasing violence and arrests.
Fourteen people were arrested at the North Dakota State Capitol in Bismarck during a protest Thursday afternoon. Those arrested were part of a group of about 50 protestors who traveled from the protest camps near Standing Rock to the Capitol Grounds to sing and pray, according to KFYR.
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