BlazeTV reporter Elijah Schaffer was assaulted on Tuesday night while filming the unrest in Philadelphia following the fatal police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr.
Protesters swarmed the streets of West Philadelphia on Monday after two Philadelphia police officers shot and killed Wallace for charging at them with a knife on Monday, as previously reported. However, what started off as Black Lives Matter protests quickly escalated into vandalism, riots and mass looting across the city, with many ransacking stores like Walmart, T-Mobile, Dollar Tree and Five Below.
'Stop Recording!'
Schaffer was covering a looting in progress at the Five Below store when he was attacked by the looters. The Daily Caller reporter Shelby Talcott, who was also on the ground reporting, shared video footage of the incident on Twitter.
"Mass looting across the river and @ElijahSchaffer just got beaten up for filming. This is inside the Five Below store. Police are in the same parking lot near the Walmart, but there seem to be too many looters."
The clip showed her walking inside the store and seeing Schaffer, who can be seen wearing a white patterned bandana as a face covering, being approached by alleged looters asking him to "Stop recording!" The looters can be seen surrounding Schaffer and punching him repeatedly. Talcott also shared images of Schaffer with a bleeding lip.
'I Was Jumped By BLM Rioters'
Schaffer explained in a video posted on his own Twitter account saying that he "was jumped by BLM rioters while they were looting more than a dozen stores,"
"Though in pain, I didn't stop reporting because Americans need to see what the corporate media refuses to show," he added.
Schaffer then shared the footage he took moments before he was attacked. "This is the footage I was recording when BLM assaulted me," he captioned the clip. "Other journalists were filming but I was the only white person in the store I do believe I was targeted for being white as they accused me of being a white supremacist & did not attack people of color."
