While covering the ongoing immigration protests in Los Angeles, a reporter was struck in the leg by a rubber bullet by a member of the LAPD. 9 News Australia reporter Lauren Tomasi’s injury was caught on video in a clip that was posted to X.
“After hours of standing off, the situation has now rapidly deteriorated,” Tomasi, the U.S. correspondent for the Australian news organization, says in the clip. “The LAPD moving in on horseback, firing rubber bullets at protestors, moving them on through the heart of L.A.” In the video, Tomasi is holding a microphone while being filmed by a cameraperson as she stands slightly to the side of a line of LAPD officers on horseback. As the rest of the LAPD officers face forward, one can be seen turning to face Tomasi, aiming and firing.
Tomasi screams and grabs her leg as an unseen person yells at the officer, “You just f–king shot the reporter.” The camera then jostles a bit as the cameraperson, presumably accompanied by Tomasi, walks away from the officers.
“You OK?” the cameraperson asks. “Yeah, I’m good. I’m good,” Tomasi responds. Watch the full video of the encounter below.
Tomasi isn’t the first member of the press who has been injured while covering these protests against ICE raids. On Saturday night, a local CBS Los Angeles reporter was also temporarily blinded after being hit with tear gas while reporting on protests.
The Los Angeles protests over the Trump administration’s federal arrests of undocumented individuals started in earnest on Friday in Los Angeles’ city limit, though they grew in intensity by Sunday. That’s when President Trump sent 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles in an attempt to quell the protests. This marked the first time a president sent the National Guard to a state without a request from that state’s governor since the 1960s.
Before the National Guard was sent in, there were reports that some protestors were openly attacking officers. Those instances of violence continued through Sunday as several protestors clashed with officers, resulting in injuries, according to federal law enforcement officials. Protest hotspots included the city of Paramount on Saturday, the Westlake District and the Edward Roybal Federal Building in downtown L.A., where hundreds of people were being detained. As of mid-afternoon on Sunday, no official tally of arrests had been released.
By Sunday evening, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a formal letter demanding that the National Guard be withdrawn and that Trump rescind his memo. Newsom called the federal deployment “a serious breach of state sovereignty” and announced plans to sue Trump over it on Monday.
