An employee at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility shot a protester outside in Colorado, according to local reports.
The shooting happened outside the Aurora ICE detention center on Thursday night. The protester is expected to survive, according to a post by journalist Kyle Clark.
The protester was shot by an employee at the facility who works for the private prison company The GEO Group, which is contracted by ICE, according to Clark.
The employee, 42-year-old Brandon Booth, was arrested and held on suspicion of attempted second-degree murder charges, Clark added.
According to a post by the Aurora Police Department, Booth and other employees at the detention facility were waiting outside because protests were “impeding their ability to gain access to the facility for their work shifts,” according to police.
“The two women initiated a verbal confrontation and took pictures of the employees’ vehicles before walking away,” police added. “At that point, Booth retrieved his personally owned pistol and fired a single shot in their direction, striking one of the women on her lower body.”
Responding officers found a woman with a gunshot wound to her lower body and another unharmed woman at her side, per police. Booth wasn’t at the scene, but officers found him in his vehicle “a short distance away,” police reported.
After shooting the protester, “Booth then got into his vehicle and drove out of the area before he was detained,” according to police. The New Republic reported that the protester was walking away when she was shot, and that The GEO Group acknowledged that one of its off-duty employees was involved.
Police Chief Todd Chamberlain called it a “tragedy on all fronts” in a public statement.
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