Thread by @RyanVanVelzer

I want to share some of my impressions of what happened last night in the third day of Louisville protests as @GovAndyBeshear called in the National Guard and @louisvillemayor put in place a curfew.

I want to emphasize that I will be characterizing what I saw with the understanding that I am only one person and so much happened last night it's impossible for any one person to witness. Our night as @WFPLNews reporters ended after we were teargassed and pepper balled by police

Even before the curfew began, police fired teargas and greens smoke at Sixth and Liberty streets.

There were a lot of little skirmishes. I had peppers balls shot at me on several occasions, but it slowed down as it got later. Here is the arm of a 21-year-old man who got hit by pepper balls.

Eventually I ended up with a group of about 200 marching around downtown a few hours after curfew had been imposed.

Here they are blocking First street and Broadway. To me, this crowd appeared to be largely young people. I did not see this crowd commit acts of vandalism. I did see them throw fireworks.

I also ran into these guys riding lawn mowers. I overheard a police officer call them awesome.

We snaked through downtown streets. Police followed us, and at times appeared on side streets. Humvees would try to cut the crowd off, but they just kept turning a new direction and if I had to guess it seemed like police were basically letting protesters tire themselves out.

Eventually we ended up on Broadway near ninth street. Gun shots rang out. 5 in quick succession. People turned and ran back, but the police kept pushing the end of the march forward toward the shots.

So we had to keep marching toward the shots. That's when things got chaotic. This is audio of me narrating our encounter with police last night about a minute after the gun shots went off in #LouisvilleProtests

In the aftermath, I tried to meet back up with my colleagues, but we were on opposite sides of the street and the police had separated. We walked north up Ninth I think. I watched national guard take positions with some time of weapon and I honestly feared I was going to get shot

I put my hands in the air and slowly walked around the Guard and the police force, back to my colleagues, while stating that I was a reporter. Separated from the protesters, unnerved and exhausted we returned to our office. In total, I walked about 12 miles.

I accidentally cut of the end of the audio,here is the full clip with police on Saturday night. And I should add that it is terrifying to have different police telling you to do different things at the same time. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a person of color.