Suspect Charged With Assaulting Coast Guard Officers at Alameda Protest
Federal prosecutors have charged the driver of a truck who disobeyed orders to stop at the entrance to San Francisco's Coast Guard Island with assaulting USCG officers with a deadly weapon.
The incident occurred in the context of a protest against the Trump administration's plans to send about 100 extra federal law enforcement officers to Coast Guard Island in Alameda, intended as reinforcements for the White House's effort to enforce immigration laws. Early in the morning on October 23, protesters set up a blockade at the mainland side of the bridge to the island, near the intersection of Dennison Street and Embarcadero East. By the time they arrived, the federal deployment plan had already been called off: on the night of October 22, after personal appeals from San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, President Donald Trump had agreed to drop the deployment. The news broke on local media at about 0945 local time on October 23.
Protests at the bridge on-ramp continued through the day and into the evening. At about 2200 hours, a driver in a U-Haul truck arrived on scene and began to back onto the bridge in reverse, towards a security barricade of U.S. Coast Guard officers and patrol vehicles. The truck stopped and started as officers shouted at the driver; then, after a pause, it began to accelerate towards them, approaching to within 10-15 feet. The officers opened fire in volume at the truck. The driver then shifted into forward gear and drove away from the scene, and the U-Haul was later found abandoned on a nearby street.
The suspect, identified as 26-year-old Brendan Munro Thompson (aka Bella Thompson), was detained later at the hospital. He was in possession of a pair of pants matching images of the driver at the scene, and he had gone to the hospital for treatment for a gunshot wound in the back.
"Thompson drove a U-Haul truck directly into a line of Coast Guard personnel who were protecting the Coast Guard base, as they bravely do day in and day out. Let this be clear: there is zero tolerance for assault on federal officers or property, and those who do so will face federal criminal charges," asserted United States Attorney Craig H. Missakian in a statement Tuesday.
Thompson is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in federal district court on November 10. If convicted, he could face a sentence of up to 20 years in jail and a fine of up to $250,000.