On this day, 7 June 2020, the brother of a Seattle police officer drove his car at high speed into a Black Lives Matter protest in the city, then shot a Black protester. The driver ploughed into the protest at high speed, in an act reminiscent of the white supremacist terrorist attack in Charlottesville which killed Heather Heyer in 2017.

One of the protesters, Dan Gregory, confronted the driver and grabbed his steering wheel, trying to protect the crowd. The driver then sped up, forcing Gregory to let go and give chase on foot. He soon caught up to the car and punched the driver, who then shot Gregory and fled, then handed himself into police.

Gregory, himself the son of a former Baltimore police officer, survived and later told Sara Jean Green of the Seattle Times: "I would do it again. I would die for people I don’t know. That’s me."

In 2023, the shooter was sentenced to just 24 months of probation and had his driving licence suspended for 30 days, having played guilty to reckless driving. Charges of first-degree assault were then dropped by prosecutors.

Amidst a wave of protest in defence of Black people's lives, scores of people began ramming their vehicles into demonstrators. The Boston Globe found 139 rammings between May 2020 and September 2021, which killed at least three and wounded 100 people, including multiple attacks by white supremacists.

Fewer than half of these incidents resulted in criminal charges. Meanwhile, Republicans in 15 states around the country attempted to introduce laws to legalise or prevent lawsuits against attackers who killed protesters with their vehicles, successfully introducing them in states such as Florida, Iowa and Oklahoma.

Pictured: Gregory after being shot