Linda Black Elk, a member of the Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council, was helping care for injured demonstrators. The council estimated that 300 people were treated for injuries, including 26 who were taken to area hospitals.
“All of a sudden there were these bright, blinding spotlights, so you could see each other, but you couldn’t see [the police],” she said. “Every once in awhile you could hear someone scream who had been hit by a rubber bullet.”
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“What it was like was people walking through the dark of a winter North Dakota night, some of them so cold, and sprayed with water for so long, that their clothes were frozen to their body and crunching as they walked. "
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Noah Morris was another medic at the scene. “They were just hosing people down with their water cannon that continued for the entirety of the four hours I was out there watching,” he said. He said that earlier in the week, the rivers and creeks nearby had started to crust over with ice. As he and his team flushed the eyes of people sprayed with tear gas, the water and milk of magnesia they used turned to black ice on the ground.
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A 21-year-old woman from New York, Sophia Wilansky, underwent surgery Monday after her arm was severely injured by a concussion grenade, according to the council.
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In a statement on Tuesday, her father, Wayne Wilansky, said she would need multiple surgeries to regain functional use of her arm and hand. “All of the muscle and soft tissue between her elbow and wrist were blown away,” he said.
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In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, the sheriff’s department denied using concussion grenades and suggested the injury was caused by explosives allegedly used by protesters. The Medic and Healer Council responded, “These statements are refuted by Sophia’s testimony, by several eyewitnesses who watched police intentionally throw concussion grenades at unarmed people, by the lack of charring of flesh at the wound site, and by the grenade pieces that have been removed from her arm in surgery and will be saved for legal proceedings.”
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“We are standing back in a state of disbelief,” said Jesse Lopez, a surgeon based in Kansas City, who has traveled to North Dakota multiple times to support the Medic and Healer Council. “I maybe could see pepper spray, maybe rubber bullets, maybe tear gas, but water cannons? That’s done to inflict deliberate, severe, life-threatening harm.”
The Intercept
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