Police in Genesee County, Michigan, are on the hunt for the driver of a Chevrolet HHR who hit five striking United Auto Workers union members yesterday evening while leaving General Motors’ Flint Processing Center. After hitting the picketers, the driver fled the scene, WNEM reports. Two picketers were hospitalized due to their injuries but at the moment do not appear to be in serious condition.
“These people are just making a living and want a little bigger piece of the pie and this happens. It’s very disturbing,” UAW Region 1D Director Steve Dawes told WNEM. “Three people in either a dark blue or a black HHR or possibly PT Cruiser came out of the building, out 70 yards and was driving at a high rate of speed, hit their brake real quick and kept going. Ran over five people and sent two to the hospital and three with other injuries.”
According to police, picketers were blocking the exit to the facility, but the UAW says that wasn’t the case and that it believes the hit-and-run was intentional. “We’re, you know, doing a very peaceful legal demonstration, wasn’t bothering nobody, wasn’t blocking traffic, was allowing people to come in and out, the ones that had to come in,” Dawes told WNEM. “There was no sense, no cause for this to happen.”
Police are reportedly working to collect video of the crash to determine exactly what happened and hopefully identify the driver. And despite their members being injured, the union has vowed not to let violence against members stop the picketing or the strike. As for the driver, the current hope is that they will decide to turn themselves in on their own. “I just hope that these people turn themselves in, they’re in enough trouble. They don’t need to be running from the police,” Dawes said.