LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles police responded Sunday after somebody drove a U-Haul box truck down a street crowded with marchers demonstrating in support of the Iranian people, causing protesters to scramble out of the way and then run after the speeding vehicle to try to attack the driver.
The U-Haul truck, with a window and side mirrors shattered, was stopped several blocks away and surrounded by police cars. ABC7 news helicopter footage showed officers keeping the crowd at bay as demonstrators swarmed the truck, throwing punches at the driver and thrusting flagpoles through the driver's side window.
The driver, a man who was not identified, was detained “pending further investigation,” police said in a statement Sunday evening.
The police statement said one person was hit by the truck but nobody was seriously hurt. Two people were evaluated by paramedics and both declined treatment, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.
A banner attached on the truck said “No Shah. No Regime. USA: Don’t Repeat 1953. No Mullah,” an apparent reference to a U.S.-backed coup that year that toppled then Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.
The August 1953 coup stemmed from U.S. fears over the Soviet Union increasingly wanting a piece of Iran as Communists agitated within the country. The ground had been laid partially by the British, who wanted to wrest back access to the Iranian oil industry, which had been nationalized earlier by Mossadegh.
The coup toppled Mossadegh and cemented the power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It also lit the fuse for the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which saw the fatally ill shah flee Iran and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini usher in the theocracy that still governs the country.
A huge crowd of demonstrators, some waving the flag of Iran before the Islamic Revolution, had gathered Sunday afternoon along Veteran Avenue in LA's Westwood neighborhood to protest against the Iranian theocracy. Police eventually issued a dispersal order, and by 5 p.m. only about a hundred protesters were still in the area, ABC7 reported.
Activists say a crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran has killed more than 530 people. Protesters flooded the streets in Iran's capital of Tehran and its second-largest city again Sunday.
Los Angeles is home to the largest Iranian community outside of Iran.
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