Breitbart News covers breaking updates from Thursday night’s protests over the death of Freddie Gray. After two nights of relative peace, demonstrators are still confronting police as the sun sets, but the city is hopeful for continued calm rather than a repeat of Monday’s riots.
1:07 AM EST: More from Dan Fleuette on the ground:
Al Sharpton’s full remarks at New Shiloh Baptist Church, where the funeral of Freddie Gray was held on Monday 4/27.
Sharpton, with no regard for due process, says “In the deep South, in North Charleston, young man was dead, video sent in, they fired the cop and arrested him that day. You telling me they got more respect for life in the deep South, where they have a Confederate flag over the state capitol, than we do up north?”
12:50 AM EST: More images from Breitbart’s Dan Fleuette depicting the Penn North protests Thursday night.
11:13 PM EST: Body is male.
11:05 PM EST: More arrests.
11:00 PM EST:
10:58 PM EST: Cops are splitting up for curfew enforcement with lingering people on streets.
10:56 PM EST: Uh oh.
10:16 PM EST: No confrontations yet.
10:04 PM EST: Curfew begins without incident–even a little joyful.
10:02 PM EST: Clear.
9:54 PM EST: Calm seems possible again tonight.
9:50 PM EST: T minus.
9:43 PM EST: Happening:
9:37 PM EST: Another leak from the police investigation: Gray had a head wound matching a specific bolt inside the police van. Breitbart’s John Sexton covers the development here.
9:35 PM EST: Curfew approaches.
9:30 PM EST: Scenes of protesters outside Baltimore City Hall earlier today. All photos by Dan Fleuette of Breitbart News, who says of the atmosphere: “the crowd was much smaller than last night and wasn’t very raucous… no tear gas, no scuffles, or anything like that.”
9:20 PM EST: Both anti-cop activists and cops upset by the decision to keep the investigation private:
9:18 PM EST: Another in a long line of facepalm-y NYTimes corrections:
9:03 PM EST: Miscellany. Police press conference, front-line exchange, and NAACP opportunism.
8:51 PM EST: State’s Attorney for the city of Baltimore releases a statement on the Gray investigation, affirming that the police file will not be released to the public.
8:32 PM EST: Donta Allen, the man who was in the same police van as Freddie Gray, spoke out to local media Thursday, giving a slightly different account than in the leaked document from the BPD’s investigation which the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
Allen described what he heard: “When I got in the van, I didn’t hear nothing. It was a smooth ride. We went straight to the police station. All I heard was a little banging for about four seconds. I just heard little banging, just little banging.”
Asked whether he told police whether he heard Gray banging his head against the van, Allen said, “I told homicide that. I don’t work for the police. I did not tell the police nothing.”
According to the autopsy on Gray, there is no evidence that Gray hit his head against anything on his own. His fatal neck and spinal injury was a kin to the type suffered in a car accident; it needed that amount of force and energy.
8:23 PM EST: The curfew, originally announced to last seven days, will continue through the weekend, despite the general compliance over the first two nights.