Cesar was on his way home when he got caught in a giant cloud of tear gas, the same substance banned in warfare, outside of City Hall in Downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, after the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) deployed the chemical agent to disperse a large crowd of hundreds of people protesting the recent ICE immigration raids in Los Angeles.
Cesar wasn’t there to protest, though.
He was trying to get out of DTLA before a curfew went into effect at 8 PM.
“I was just trying to get home from work,” he told L.A. TACO during an interview. For safety reasons, he requested that his last name be omitted from this story.
As the toxic tear gas drifted downwind towards 1st Street, hundreds of people scattered. “That little field on 1st and Spring, people were running across it to get away and the cops were throwing flash bangs and lighting that shit up,” Cesar said.
After some of the tear gas had settled, Los Angeles police officers set up skirmish lines around 1st Street and Spring Street to prevent the remaining protesters and Cesar from escaping the area.