Protester Crushed Between Police Jeeps In Chile During Violent Protests


The young man was seriously injured but is expected to survive.
SANTIAGO — A Chilean policeman appeared in court on Saturday on a charge of grievous bodily harm after a 20-year-old protester was allegedly run over by an armored police vehicle during a protest in the capital on Friday evening.

The policeman, whose name has not yet been officially confirmed, was released on bail pending further investigation, the regional prosecutor said in a press statement.

The injured man was named by local media as Oscar Ignacio Perez Cortez. He is being treated in a private hospital for a suspected fractured pelvis, local newspaper El Mercurio reported.

Footage recorded by local television stations showed two police riot vehicles surrounded by a large crowd of protesters in Santiago’s Plaza Italia, a central rallying point in recent weeks, before the incident took place at around 7:30 p.m. on Friday.

General Enrique Monras, a Santiago police spokesman, said police had been confronted by a crowd of around 1,500 people throwing stones, bottles of paint and Molotov cocktails, which left two police officers injured and a police motorbike thrown in the Mapocho River.

The protest followed a period of relative calm this week after more than two months of fierce demonstrations against the government of President Sebastian Pinera over endemic inequality in the southern Latin nation, which have left at least 26 people dead and thousands more injured and arrested.