| Time | Text |
|---|---|
|
Near-Death Encounter
00:07:30
|
|
| I had never had that type of feeling of dread before. | |
| And I was just wishing and praying in my head that law enforcement were nearby or undercover or around the corner. | |
| I'll see a police car, something, please. | |
| And I kept walking and I, it was dark. | |
| This was 10 p.m. on a Friday night. | |
| So the shadows are casted long from the light lamps. | |
| And I could see as I was walking away, trying to remain calm. | |
| I was still in black block, covered up, masked, my eyes were covered. | |
| I could see the shadows of the group behind me. | |
| They were pursuing me. | |
| Every business was basically closed. | |
| This was a year after the riots that ravaged downtown. | |
| I mean, that finished off any businesses that weren't finished off from COVID already. | |
| The hotel that was open that I went to, the front doors were locked. | |
| Vagrancy had become such a big problem at that point that the hotels in downtown didn't unlock their doors. | |
| So the person at the front desk didn't open it for me. | |
| And the group caught up. | |
| And in one swoop, one of them grabbed at my head and pulled off the sunglasses that I had. | |
| The ski goggles, actually, and the balaclava. | |
| And I was completely exposed. | |
| And I took off running. | |
| And this video I have shared. | |
| It's compiled from multiple surveillance cameras in the city. | |
| And you can see me running for my life. | |
| I never ran that fast before. | |
| I didn't know I could run that fast. | |
| And I'm running through downtown, sprinting, screaming for help. | |
| And nobody helped. | |
| There were people walking around. | |
| This was a Friday night, 10 p.m. | |
| It's not that late. | |
| Cars were in the middle of the road. | |
| I ran in the middle of the cars in the streets at the red light, pounding on like windows and cars, asking for help. | |
| And when the light turned green, they drove off. | |
| And you can see in the video that the group caught up to me and they tackled me to the ground. | |
| In that, my weight plus the weight of the person on top of me just shredded the skin on my leg. | |
| And then as I tried to get up, some other person ran up in black block and just kept punching me until I fell to the ground. | |
| And then that person held me in a chokehold really hard. | |
| And it was seconds in the video. | |
| It felt much longer in my mind. | |
| Maybe from lack of oxygen, I'm not sure. | |
| But that was my one near-death experience. | |
| And I was just thinking about, I was thinking about my family and those I cared and loved. | |
| It was like flashing out almost like almost how you would see it maybe in a film. | |
| Like one person after another. | |
| And I was like, I'm so sorry that I let you down, that I go out this way. | |
| You know, and I could hear like the rest of the anti-film mob catch up. | |
| They were running because I sprinted really fast. | |
| So they were just catching up. | |
| I knew if I go unconscious and I'm unconscious on the ground there, that group will kill me. | |
| They were wanting my blood for months from all the reporting I did in 2020, all the mugshots I released, all the names, all the charges. | |
| They wanted me dead. | |
| And before I passed out from being choked, some journalists ran up. | |
| They caught up with the group. | |
| And the person who was holding me in that chokehold, he held me so tight, by the way, that the blood vessels in my eyes burst. | |
| I was able to get out of that chokehold and I ran to the next thing I saw, which was the Nines Hotel. | |
| And the door I saw was open. | |
| So I just ran in and I was like a madman, barely had my breath. | |
| I was just trying to say the words, call police, call police, call police. | |
| That's all I could say. | |
| And the staff inside the hotel tried to kick me out to the street. | |
| And when they said you have to get up, I said no. | |
| And I sat on the ground. | |
| The only way they were going to get me out was they would have had to carry me out. | |
| I was not going to go back out there because the mob now were amassing outside this hotel, trying to get in. | |
| And the hotel staff refused to call police. | |
| And they said, you need to wear a mask. | |
| They actually pulled out from their drawer a black COVID mask and said, you need to put this now on. | |
| So I'm bloody. | |
| I'm out of breath. | |
| I'm screaming. | |
| Call police. | |
| I was so lucky. | |
| I looked on my body. | |
| I had my phone still. | |
| I thought that it fell out of my pocket when I was tackling on the ground. | |
| I still had it. | |
| So I used that to call 911. | |
| And the mob gathered outside the hotel were pounding on the windows, trying to break in. | |
| Nazi, stop! | |
| You see my face, Andy? | |
| Andy! | |
| You see that face? | |
| You see? | |
| If I didn't escape that area and they got in, they would have finished what they were trying to do. | |
| And so there was a hotel guest who was going up the elevator. | |
| He was like, I'm getting the hell out of here. | |
| There's like this mob outside. | |
| And I ran in after him. | |
| And I said, please let me go up with you. | |
| It was one of those hotel lifts where it requires a car to go up. | |
| So I couldn't just push numbers. | |
| He said, okay. | |
| I went up and I hid in the hotel. | |
| And eventually, finally, a Portland police officer came up to me, escorted me out through this back entrance exit that staff used for the hotel. | |
| So the mob wasn't by there. | |
| There was an ambulance there. | |
| There was a police car by ambulance. | |
| And then the police escort behind took me to the hospital, the same hospital that I was treated two years earlier. | |
| And in there, I saw online in real time all the ANSIFA accounts because they were live streaming outside the hotel. | |
| One of the ANSIFA members, she was, you could see in the video, Andy's in there, Andy's in there at Nines Hotel right now. | |
| And she was threatening me. | |
| And so they knew I left in an ambulance and they were trying to find out which hospital. | |
| So I very narrowly escaped that. | |
|
Leaving the U.S. Behind
00:00:54
|
|
| I left Portland immediately the next day on a flight and went from safe house to safe house to safe house until I couldn't arrange where I would go next. | |
| And the death threats continued. | |
| Nobody was ever arrested over the assault I just described or the 2019 one or any of the death threats. | |
| And I couldn't stay in the U.S. anymore. | |
| I was on borrowed time. | |
| You know, even when I traveled to other places, I had been recognized before by hostile people. | |
| So I couldn't live in hiding anymore and it pained me a lot to leave the country that my parents found refuge in. | |
| It was a very weird thought in my mind. | |