An Australian television journalist was hit by a rubber bullet while covering the protests over immigration raids in Los Angeles, with a British photographer also injured as police used crowd-control rounds.
Lauren Tomasi, US correspondent for Nine News, was reporting outside the Metropolitan Detention Centre in downtown LA when a rubber bullet struck her as officers began dispersing protesters.
“After hours of standing off, this situation has now rapidly deteriorated, the LAPD moving in on horseback, firing rubber bullets at protesters, moving them on through the heart of LA,” she said in the report.
Moments later, Tomasi could be heard crying out and is seen grabbing her calf.
A bystander shouted, “You just f****** shot the reporter!”
When a bystander asked Tomasi if she was alright, she responded saying: “I’m good.”
Nine said in a statement: “Lauren Tomasi was struck by a rubber bullet. Lauren and her camera operator are safe and will continue their essential work covering these events.”
The network called the incident “a stark reminder of the inherent dangers journalists can face while reporting from the frontlines of protests”.
The same weekend, British photographer Nick Stern was injured when a 14mm “sponge bullet” tore into his thigh while he was documenting a standoff between protesters and police in the city of Paramount, Los Angeles County.
“My initial concern was, were they firing live rounds?” Stern told the PA news agency.
“Some of the protesters came and helped me, and they ended up carrying me, and I noticed that there was blood pouring down my leg.”
Stern underwent emergency surgery at Long Beach Memorial Medical Centre. He said he had been clearly marked as press, as is his usual practice during hostile situations.
“That way you’re less likely to get hit because they know you’re media,” he said. Despite the injury, he said he intends to return to work: “This is too important, and it needs documenting.”
It is the second incident of its kind for Stern, who said he sustained “substantial” bruising after being hit by another live round during the George Floyd protests in 2020.
The protests, centred around recent immigration raids and the detention of hundreds of people, began in downtown LA and have spread across the state.
“The communities in LA are very tight and very close-knit,” Stern said.
“So an outside organisation like Ice coming in and removing – whatever you want to call it, removing, kidnapping, abducting people from the community – is not going to go down well at all.”
Tomasi had been reporting from the same block as the city’s field office for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where police declared an “unlawful assembly” and warned: “Media partners, please keep a safe distance from active operations.”
Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the shooting of an Australian journalist was “simply shocking” and “completely unacceptable”, urging prime minister Anthony Albanese to demand an explanation from US authorities.
“The first thing he must tell the president is to stop shooting at our journalists,” she said. “Freedom of the press is a fundamental pillar of a strong, functioning democracy.”
Both incidents occurred as police and National Guard troops moved to contain protests triggered by president Donald Trump’s latest crackdown on immigration. The White House said the deployment of 2,000 National Guard personnel was “essential to halting and reversing the invasion of illegal criminals into the United States”. California governor Gavin Newsom called the move “purposefully inflammatory”.
