Truck driver reportedly rammed into abortion protesters at rally in Iowa

A truck driver rammed into a group of demonstrators in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Friday as they crossed the street during an otherwise peaceful protest of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The unidentified male driver of a Ford truck drove into several female protesters at the tail end of a procession, rolling over one woman’s ankle and sending her to the hospital, witnesses said.

“He tried to murder them,” claimed a local journalist and witness to the attack, Lyz Lenz. “These women see him coming and a bunch of people put their hands out to stop him. And he just keeps going.”

Several witnesses, including one of the victims, described the scene in interviews with HuffPost, saying that the male driver was waiting behind several cars at a red light downtown as a throng of protesters crossed the street. He became “impatient,” witnesses said, and hit the gas, maneuvering around several cars to ram protesters.

One of the demonstrators, Alexis Russell, can be seen in the video holding a protest sign and reaching into the driver’s side window as the truck rolls forward. She told HuffPost that she was trying to steer him away from the other protesters.

“I had a fight-or-flight response,” Russell told HuffPost. “He had his window down. I grabbed the back of the window to keep up with his car and tried to grab the steering wheel. At some point he grabbed my sign and ripped it, and I fell, and he proceeded to run over one of the girls.” Russell said she was “shaken up” but otherwise uninjured. The hospitalized woman, she said, was “totally distraught.”

Molly Monk, another witness, told HuffPost that the man didn’t give any audible indication that he was anti-abortion, “but he did go out of his way to hit protesters in the street who had very visible, very clear signs that they were pro-choice.”

“It makes me feel like the pro-life movement is a complete lie if, in order to be against people who are protesting for abortion rights, you try to murder them in my street, in my neighborhood,” said Monk. “It makes me very, very sad, very hurt and very angry that this is what people think pro-life means.”

City Councilwoman Ashley Vanorny confirmed that Cedar Rapids police had been called and they are looking into the matter.