Driver Who Hit Ferguson Protester Charged In Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - The 40-year-old driver who hit a protester in Minneapolis last fall during a demonstration following the decision in Ferguson, Missouri, has now been charged by the Minneapolis City Attorney's Office.

Jeffrey P. Rice, of St. Paul, who knocked over a protester with his car on Nov. 25, is charged by summons with two misdemeanor counts of careless driving and one count of not being careful enough to avoid colliding with a pedestrian.

The protester, a woman, suffered minor injuries in the incident. She'd been in a group of protesters blocking traffic near the 3rd Precinct police station on a busy Lake Street intersection. At least two people were on the hood of Rice's car.

"The crowd of people began attacking the vehicle after it struck the female and the vehicle stopped for several seconds," the criminal complaint says. "Several people in the crowd began hitting the vehicle with fists and objects."

About a mile from the scene of the collision, Rice stopped his car and reported the incident to police. He told police he saw the people in the street before he drove through the crowd. He was not arrested.

The Hennepin County Attorney's Office had declined in February to charge Rice, saying that his actions "did not reflect intent or actions that constitute a crime that could be charged."

The demonstration he drove through was one of several that popped up across the nation following the Ferguson grand jury decision, in which a white police officer was not indicted for fatally shooting a black teenager.