Thursday a group of BLM protesters held a march in the middle of the day through the streets of Portland. Police received a call that a pedestrian had been hit by a car but when they arrived no one was there. Then they started getting calls from other motorists that the crowd was blocking streets.

As officers arrived they did not find any pedestrians who claimed to have been struck. The large group had moved away, still walking in nearby streets, some openly carrying firearms. Officers remained in the area searching for anyone who may have been injured and to collect evidence and information.

Additional calls came in from people who had been driving vehicles in the area and who were blocked by the crowd in the street.

One of the people who called was the man seen in this video. It appears he tried to make a left turn in his minivan and was immediately swarmed by armed protesters who smashed his back window and flattened at least two of his tires. They allegedly also sprayed him with some kind of irritant. Here’s video of what happened.

A short time later this same group got into an altercation with another driver about six blocks away. In this case, the encounter almost turned deadly. How this started isn’t completely clear. Handyman Joe Hall claims he was driving home after a job when he had to swerve to avoid someone on a moped. Moments later he found himself surrounded by an angry, armed crowd.

He said he then noticed the moped following his truck and a man screaming on a handheld radio to stop his truck.

When he reached Michigan Avenue, Hall said another vehicle blocked his path “and all of a sudden I have three or four people around me” with what to him looked like AR-15s and AK-47s.

Hall said he grabbed hold of a non-lethal handgun that can shoot hard pellets to try to get the people to clear the way and hadn’t realized there was a march until people circled his truck. He said he heard a woman outside on a megaphone yelling at the crowd to let him go, but the people continued to block his truck and call him a “Nazi.”

“They’re screaming and yelling at me, claiming I was out there trying to run people over. That’s when I discovered a march was going on,” he said. ”I was trapped. A vehicle in front of me trapped me in. I couldn’t go forward or around.”

You can see in the video below that a red jeep was blocking the road in front of Hall’s truck. The jeep had been painted with messages associated with the protest and it looks like someone had also covered up the license plates. The crowd was shouting at Hall and pointing weapons at him (or in his direction). He told them they had “five seconds” to lower the weapons. A member of the group argued that Hall’s truck was a deadly weapon and claimed he’d tried to run down protesters. After some back and forth the jeep apparently pulled back and Hall started to drive away. It seemed like that might be the end of the confrontation.

And then someone hit the driver’s side of the truck with a drum. Hall stopped and came out, this time holding a .38 for which he has a concealed carry permit. He moved to the back of the truck, then went back to the driver’s door for a moment. He returned to the rear of the truck and put something (maybe a cell phone) on the back rail. He approached one armed person in the crowd who shoved him backwards. Hall stumbled backward into his own tailgate. The person who had pushed him (in the white hat) raised his weapon directly at Hall. There was a second guy directly behind him who was also pointing a weapon at Hall.

Hall responded a second later by raising his own weapon. And that’s when someone knocked him to the ground. The gun popped out of his hand when he hit the street and someone in the crowd took it. Here’s the video of the altercation. Again, notice the covered up license plates on the “No Justice No Peace” jeep:

Here’s a slightly different angle in which you can see someone swing a blue drum into the side of the truck.

Better angle where you can see that drummer smashes the driver or the vehicle with his blue drum when he wants to pass by. pic.twitter.com/kaU6zvlJQ2

— Radstar (@x0OO0bbHxo0xxYY) May 7, 2021

Finally, there’s video of Hall on the ground asking the group that attacked him to call an ambulance. They tell him he’s fine and he does eventually get up and get back in his truck.

After PDX Antifa beat up a driver he tells them he needs an ambulance.
Antifa refuses to get help.
At a certain point he grabs at his heart and tells them again he needs an ambulance.
He even tells them he's a diabetic.

Antifa refuses again. Animals!#antifa #blacklivesmatter https://t.co/zMy5aOsN0A pic.twitter.com/hX1xkng5aB

— Radstar (@x0OO0bbHxo0xxYY) May 8, 2021

Hall called police and was taken to a local hospital by ambulance. He was later interviewed from his hospital bed by the Lars Larson radio show. A local news outlet also caught up with Hall in the hospital. His injuries included five broken ribs, a fractured collar bone, fractured vertebrae, a partially collapsed lung and head injuries.

Police are still investigating the incident. As I said above, you can’t see if there’s anything to the claim that Hall drove at the crowd. If he did, that might change things as far as who initiated the conflict. But everything that appears on video seems to show Hall defending himself from from an armed mob. They blocked his way, pointed guns at him, then when he got back in his car to leave tried to smash the window of his truck. Even when he stopped and came out with the .38, it appears the crowd pointed guns at him before he responded in kind. And finally they shoved him into the pavement causing serious injuries which will take months to heal. If Mayor Wheeler is serious about cracking down on violent street protests, this is his chance.

The irony of all this is that these anti-police protesters will tell you police are too violent with civilians. And yet, in the space of an hour they were smashing the cars of multiple motorist and putting people in the hospital.

Just imagine if police were holding a pro-police march through Portland and did this to motorists trying to get past them. It would be national news for a week and people on the left would demand a DOJ investigation of the entire Portland Police Bureau. These BLM goons are worse than the people they are protesting but you won’t hear anyone on the left say a peep about it. As for the national media, my guess is they’ll shrug at this “local news story” and keep looking for the next police shooting that fits the narrative.