An organizer of the anti-violence protest where five Dallas cops were shot dead says he is devastated how the peaceful and orderly rally turned "so evil so quickly."
"This was a nonviolent, peaceful protest, intended to bring about a better world. Our goal was to combat violence. You can't combat violence with violence,"
the Rev. Jeff Hood told MSNBC correspondent Gabe Gutierrez.
"We are nonviolent activists, and for this to be the mark of this protest, you know, it's devastating for these families to be suffering. It's devastating."
"We all want to know how something so beautiful could turn so evil so quickly. And by the end of the night I found myself . . . just sitting there and crying with my head in my hands and just devastated."
On Thursday, heavily armed snipers shot and killed five police officers and wounded seven at the end of a peaceful protest over fatal police shootings of black men in other states. Three suspects were in custody while a fourth was killed.
Hood said the non-violent rally had been organized "to give folks a space to express their anger, express their grief, to network with each other. … We were working with police."
Then all broke loose.
"I'm standing there, right there with a sergeant from the police department. And we had just been talking about how peaceful this protest was. Then all of a sudden, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow. And I look up and I saw what I believe were two police officers drop," Hood recalled.
"It was close enough where my reaction was to grab my stomach and grab my chest because I was trying to make sure I hadn't been shot. The sergeant runs to the shooting. I run backwards.
"I had a cross in my hand that was about 10 feet tall, and that cross immediately became kind of a shepherds crook and I was screaming, 'Active shooter! Active shooter! Run! Run! Active shooter!"'
Fox feared for his wife who was lost in the crowd, only to learn she was okay some three and a half hours later.
"It was crazy. There was nowhere to move. Everybody was hiding behind buildings. And, you know, eventually I ended up ministering to people," he said.
"Everybody of course wants to know why. Why has this happened? We all want to know how something so beautiful could turn so evil so quickly … We've got to quit shooting each other! … We have got to learn to love each other."
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