Incident Details
- Date of Incident
- May 30, 2020
- Location
- Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Targets
- Lucas Jackson (Reuters)
- Assailant
- Private individual
- Was the journalist targeted?
- Unknown
Assault
- Equipment Broken
- Actor
- Private individual
Equipment Damage
An unidentified man attacked Reuters photographer Lucas Jackson with a crowbar during protests in Minneapolis on May 30, damaging his camera.
An unidentified man wearing body armor broke Reuters photographer Lucas Jackson’s camera with a crowbar while he was covering protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 30, 2020.
Protests that began in Minnesota on May 26 have spread across the country, sparked by a video showing a police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a black man, during an arrest the day before. Floyd was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Jackson described his attacker and posted a photo of his broken camera on Twitter:
In a statement given to the Committee to Protect Journalists through Reuters’ press office, Jackson said that the assailant was “a young white man wearing body armor emblazoned with a red medic cross.”
In the statement, Jackson said that the young man screamed “Get out of here!” before smashing Jackson’s camera with the crowbar. The statement did not say that Jackson was injured in the attack.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogues press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].