Journalists threatened with assault while covering Olympia protest

Sara Gentzler, a reporter for the Olympian, was threatened by an armed individual while covering a demonstration at the Capitol in Olympia, Washington, on Jan. 6, 2021.

The protest that day, which started at the Capitol, migrated to the Governor’s Mansion and grew increasingly aggressive as the afternoon wore on, was one of several held by supporters of President Donald Trump around the country, organized as the U.S. Congress was set to confirm President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.

Gentzler told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that she had been covering the protest intermittently since noon. When she returned shortly before 3 p.m., a man armed with multiple firearms and a knife approached her.

“He asked, ‘Are you with the media?’ I said yes, and he asked, ‘Which publication?’ And he obviously didn’t want me there,” Gentzler said. The same man approached her again a little while later, after she had met up with AP photojournalist Ted S. Warren.

“He was very aggressive and made it very clear that he didn’t want us there. He said he had pepper-sprayed members of the media earlier in the day and we had five minutes to leave,” Gentzler said.

In a short clip Gentzler posted to Twitter shortly before 3 p.m., the man can briefly be seen before lunging at Gentzler and trying to grab her phone in an attempt to prevent her from filming the interaction

KOMO News reported that the same man had threatened and sprayed two members of the media with what court documents identified as bear spray near the intersection of 11th Avenue and Capitol Way South at around noon, incapacitating both for hours. The Tracker documented the multiple assaults in Olympia here.

“As he was sort of going away from us,” Gentzler said, “he said, ‘We’re going to shoot you fucking dead in the next year.’”

“I’m used to people generally expressing anti-media sentiment, I’ve kind of come to expect it. But that was an exceptional interaction. It definitely felt aggressive and truly frightening,” Gentzler said. “I was just trying to figure out what my next move was, rethinking what I could do to be safe and continue doing this.”

Gentzler told the Tracker that she and Warren were able to meet up with other journalists to have safety in numbers and to warn them about the man.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is documenting multiple incidents involving journalists, including assaults, arrests and equipment damage, from Jan. 6. All of our election-related coverage can be found here.

This article has been updated to include comment from Sara Gentzler and to identify Ted S. Warren of the Associated Press.