USA TODAY International Edition
DA: Driver meant to kill Trump supporters
“She positioned her vehicle to be used as a backup weapon and she used that vehicle as a deadly weapon, willing to injure and kill those who stood in her way.” District Attorney Todd Spitzer
LOS ANGELES – The organizer of a Southern California rally against police brutality and racism has been charged with attempted murder, accused of driving her car into counterprotesters and running over a woman’s head.
Tatiana Turner deliberately drove into a crowd of President Donald Trump’s supporters with the intent to kill the woman and seriously injured a man who broke his leg, Orange County prosecutors said Tuesday.
“She positioned her vehicle to be used as a backup weapon and she used that vehicle as a deadly weapon, willing to injure and kill those who stood in her way,”
District Attorney Todd
Spitzer said in a statement.
A defense lawyer said Turner tried to get help from deputies Saturday in Yorba Linda after her group was overwhelmed by a hostile crowd.
Turner saw people with guns and feared for her life when she got into her car that was blocked by Trump supporters, attorney Ludlow Creary II said. She was trying to get away and didn’t intend to hit anyone, he said. “There were actions that caused her to become fearful for her life, and that’s when she accelerated,” Creary said.
Turner, 40, made her first appearance in court remotely from the jail and was ordered held on $ 1 million bail. A plea of not guilty was entered on her behalf by her lawyer.
The incident is one of more than 100 where motorists have plowed into demonstrations since late May after protests against police brutality that grew nationwide over the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer, according to Ari Weil, deputy director on the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago.
The vast majority of those cases tallied by Weil involved motorists who ran into those demonstrating for causes aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement, Weil said.
The victim has not been named. Authorities said she was hospitalized with major injuries and expected to survive.
Turner, who has a felony record for drug sales and domestic violence, is also charged with six counts of assault with a deadly weapon, including one count for causing great bodily injury, mayhem, and two counts of the use of pepper spray by a felon.