Red paint chucked at torchbearer as flame taken through Ganges
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A female protester interrupted Darian Sport-Maxwell’s leg of the torch relay on Saturday.
The woman threw red paint from a yogurt container at the torchbearer, but the paint splattered instead on a Vancouver Organizing Committee security guard who was running alongside the torchbearer.
Photographers and some spectators were also splashed with paint and paint tracks smeared the road at the intersection by Mouat’s and Grace Point Square.
“As far as [this incident] goes, we don’t have any charges pending yet,” said Corp. Darren Lagan, spokesperson for the Vancouver Island RCMP on Tuesday.
Lagan said the individual was allegedly dressed like a witch, but a nearby eyewitness told the Driftwood the paint-thrower was not dressed up at all and was certainly not the same person photographed holding an “Olympics=debt” sign in a witch’s hat.
Lagan said while police don’t typically reprimand protesters or demonstrators, the paint-throwing incident on Salt Spring could be considered an assault.
“When you throw something on someone, that’s an assault,” he said.
Salt Spring police are in the process of identifying the paint-thrower.
“We will need to discuss with that person what they were thinking.”
A male protester laid across Fulford-Ganges Road by Harlan’s Chocolates with a pillow in his shirt.
“No one is going to run over a pregnant man,” he was overheard saying to spectators.
He obliged when a police officer asked him to get off the road.
Lagan said in the grand scheme of the relay, the Salt Spring protests were considered “minor.”
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