Man Fatally Shot Next to Occupy Oakland Encampment

- Bay City News

The victim of a shooting that occurred near the Occupy Oakland encampment in downtown Oakland late this afternoon has died, police said.

Officers responded to reports of a shooting at 14th Street and Broadway around 5 p.m., police said.

The shooting occurred outside a Tully's coffee shop directly in front of the protesters' encampment. The area is blocked off this evening as officers investigate.

Barucha Peller, who is part of the Occupy Oakland encampment, said some of the first people to help the victim were medics from the camp. She said the shooting happened next to the camp, not in it.

"The only direct Occupy Oakland involvement was in order to provide emergency first-aid services," she said.

Motorist Drew Sowyrda was driving west on Telegraph Avenue on his way to the gym when, as he was passing 27th Street, he saw "cop cars driving faster than I've ever seen through the traffic."

"Right at the junction of Broadway and Telegraph they stopped a white car and pulled out the driver at gunpoint," Sowyrda said. He said the male driver was handcuffed and put into a police car, and he overheard police explaining to two female passengers in the car that there had been a shooting.

He said they began to block off Broadway at that point.

BART spokesman Jim Allison said the 12th Street station in Oakland was temporarily closed this evening as police searched two trains for possible suspects.

Some people ran into the station after the shooting and it was initially believed that they were suspects, Allison said. However, officials have since determined that those people were "probably just frightened" and wanted to get away, he said.

The station reopened at around 5:25 p.m. Several city officials showed up at the scene after the shooting, including Police Chief Howard Jordan and City Council President Larry Reid, who was among council members who held a news conference Wednesday saying the encampment must go.

After learning that Occupy Oakland medics had helped the person who was shot tonight, Reid said, "I appreciate their efforts to help save the life of the victim in this situation."

Although many at the scene insist the shooting wasn't related to the encampment, Reid said it should be part of the larger conversation about the camp.

"I think it puts us in a position of having to look at this problem in a more comprehensive manner," he said, saying that there were knife fights on 14th Street earlier this week.

Early this afternoon, Mayor Jean Quan said that a plan to remove the encampment "has to be done thoughtfully" and "has to take time."

Quan said she wants to "continue dialogue" with protesters who have been in Frank Ogaza Plaza for a month before the city takes any action. Chief Jordan told reporters earlier today that, "I'm not at liberty to announce if and when we'll take any action" to remove protesters from the plaza.

City Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente, who is one of the members urging the immediate removal of the encampment, said, "We're waiting for the mayor and her administration to deal with the situation but it gets worse and worse every day."

De La Fuente said he thinks the longer the protesters are allowed to stay at the plaza the harder it will be to remove them.

"More and more people are camping out in the plaza, not less," he said. On Wednesday, one protester said, the city turned off lights in the part of the plaza that contains the encampment.

Tonight, the lights were still out and a number of protesters at the crime scene were angrily yelling, "Turn the lights on," saying that the darkness leads to more crime. Others lit candles all around the scene of the shooting, and one man sat cross-legged and meditating near the police tape.