A 21-year-old woman may lose her arm after an explosion. The woman was protesting the pipeline in North Dakota. Protesters claim the explosion was caused by a police concussion grenade. Police claim the woman was injured by an exploding propane bomb made by protesters.
When was the last time you heard of a concussion grenade blowing someone’s arm off?
A Morton County, N.D., Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman said police had not used any concussion grenades during a clash with pipeline protesters on Sunday, contradicting several reports from activists.
“It wasn’t from our law enforcement, because we didn’t deploy anything that should have caused that type of damage to her arm,” said sheriff’s spokeswoman Maxine Herr, who said medical officials first encountered the injured woman away from the action, at a nearby casino. “We’re not sure how her injury was sustained.”
Herr suggested that the woman may have been injured while protesters were “rigging up their own explosives” — propane bottles to be thrown at police. None of those propane bottles exploded, and “the only explosion the officers heard was on the protesters’ side,” Herr said.
No one was arrested for making or throwing explosives, she said.
Sunday night’s clash was the latest in a months-long confrontation between protesters and police over an oil pipeline being built near tribal lands, where hundreds of Native Americans and others have gathered to protest.