Police investigating viral video showing a man pointing a gun at anti-Trump protesters in Washington state
Police are investigating a heated incident in Washington state during a pro-Trump protest and a counterprotest where a man pulled a gun after allegedly being assaulted.
Video of the altercation appeared on Tik Tok and quickly went viral. It was recorded at a pro-Trump demonstration where anti-Trump protesters showed up in the city of Woodinville.
The video shows a man in a Trump cap pointing his gun at protesters while yelling at them and then other Trump supporters drag him away.
Witnesses admit that the man was assaulted before they were able to record on their cellphones. They said that someone came up and splashed him with dirty water from a bucket, and then tossed the bucket at him.
"He threw like this bucket of dirty water on one of the Trump supporters," Mandy Luttinen said to KING 5 News.
Luttinen said she immediately jumped in between the man and the other protesters, many of whom were teenagers.
"There wasn't a lot of thinking. I've been in a couple tense situations and you do act more than you think," she explained. "It was just like, don't let the kids get hurt."
A Trump supporter told KING 5 that he knew the man who pulled the gun and said that he was a military veteran who served in Afghanistan. He added that the counterprotesters were yelling at them, saying they were racists despite the fact that many of the supporters were not white.
"We don't embrace acts of violence," he said.
Police still investigating
Woodinville police are still trying to sort out exactly how things spiraled out of control.
"We're not really sure of what's happened at this point," said Woodinville Police Chief Kathleen Larson.
"There are two sides to every story, and in this particular case, in this video, we don't see what precipitated the man pulling out his firearm, and he was assaulted prior to that," she added.
Here's the video of the alarming incident:
Gun drawn during dueling protests in Woodinvillewww.youtube.com