KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - In the days since Saturday’s protest at the Country Club Plaza, which included tear gas, fires and injured protesters, police officials have denied that they fired rubber bullets.
But Sean Stearns, a 32-year-old Kansas City man who was at the protest, said that’s what he believes pummeled his left eye just before midnight. The power of the projectile was so strong that it knocked Stearns onto his back and drew so much blood that his girlfriend Sydney Ragsdale immediately wondered if he had been struck by gunfire.
Now, Stearns said, he’s facing the brutal reality that his doctor shared with him, The Kansas City Star reports.
“He told me he doesn’t like the chances of me being able to see out of it again,” Stearns said. “Best case, I could see shadows, maybe some light. If I’m lucky and stay healthy, I would be able to keep it. But if it deteriorates or shrinks, it will shrivel away.
“Worst case is removal.”
Since Friday, protesters have marched at the Plaza and chanted against police brutality after a black man, George Floyd, died May 25 in Minnesota while in police custody. A white Minneapolis police officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes, the use of force captured on cell phone video.
Saturday’s protest was among the most violent in Kansas City so far, with fires, broken windows and many confrontations between police and protesters. Fifty people were arrested that night.
Several who were at the Saturday protest have posted pictures of their wounds on social media or detailed their injuries to reporters. Those who have marched at the Plaza since have talked about rubber bullets and about how one man’s hand was broken when hit by one.
When asked Wednesday if that ammunition was used Saturday night, Kansas City police spokesman Sgt. Jacob Becchina said in an email “we don’t call them rubber bullets.”
“Throughout these protests, with the exception of last night, less lethal projectiles have been used,” Becchina said. “Bean bag rounds or batton rounds have been used to dissuade protesters from assaultive actions or movements.”
Police have seen the Facebook post that Ragsdale, 28, wrote and that has been shared thousands of times, the spokesman said.
“It’s awful what happened to him,” Becchina said. “We don’t want violence on either side. We don’t want rocks and bottles OR bean bag rounds and tear gas.”
While she didn’t see what hit Stearns, Ragsdale said the stitches on her boyfriend’s left eyelid are in the shape of a rubber bullet.
“To us, it doesn’t matter what they were,” Ragsdale said. “It took away his sight, covered him in blood. The damage they did is what’s important.”
Stearns won’t deny he’s angry at what’s happened. But he’s also optimistic and grateful because he says he knows the injury could have taken more from him than his eyesight.
“I do believe in what we were doing out there,” Stearns told The Star. “I may be brave and in the moment, but I believe this now, that if I lost it, I lost it for a reason.”
Saturday night, feeling under attack by police and getting “shot in the face with a rubber bullet,” Stearns said, he got a small taste of what people of color go through all the time.
“That was me walking in a black person’s shoes for a moment,” Stearns said. “For that moment, you are in the same shoes of people on a daily basis who are harassed, hurt and killed.
“For a brief moment I was walking in those shoes.”
‘TIME TO STAND UP’
The couple, who met in an improv film class and have been together for seven years, had planned on going to Sunday’s protest at the Country Club Plaza. They had been moved by what was happening in Minneapolis and were touched by a video of an activist there who said white people needed to be allies in the fight against brutality.
“Come put your bodies on the line,” the man said. “Come put your privilege and your money on the line.”
Stearns said he wasn’t as involved after Ferguson or other shootings by police and wanted to do more now.
“I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if I hadn’t participated,” Stearns said. “It was time to stand up.”
They weren’t aware there was a protest on Saturday, but noticed people gathering as they were with their dog Elbie, a mini Australian Shepherd mix, at the park near the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
The protest was just getting started when they joined around 3 p.m.
Immediately, they were caught by the camaraderie of the protesters. People shared sanitizer and masks. Others had water and food to share, they said.
“There was a real sense of togetherness that was really powerful, we wanted to stay and be a part of it,” Ragsdale said.
At one point, after the couple had been at the protest for a couple of hours and Ragsdale was in the crowd, a protester told Stearns that police may use pepper spray and it may not be safe for dogs.
Stearns texted Ragsdale that he was going to take Elbie home.
When he returned, and as the night wore on, more people joined. The voices grew louder.
“As soon as it started to get dark, it definitely got more tense,” Ragsdale said.
Later in the evening, as the couple was on the west side of J.C. Nichols Parkway, by the Marriott, an African-American man knelt in the street, in front of a “militarized police line,” Ragsdale said.
“I thought it took so much bravery to do that,” said Ragsdale, a graduate of the University of Missouri-Kansas City law school. She was one of the students who worked alongside professor Sean O’Brien on the case of Ricky Kidd, who was freed from prison after serving 23 years for a double murder he did not commit.
Another man knelt next to the first one. Then another. Ragsdale soon joined them. Others did as well.
Stearns didn’t kneel, but stayed close. Those in that location had their hands up, no one was saying anything, the couple said.
At one point, with the people kneeling in the street, police deployed tear gas into the crowd, protesters said.
“I never heard any warning of that,” Ragsdale said. “Ever.”
Protesters fled. Including Ragsdale and Stearns.
Someone ran into Ragsdale and “knocked me over. I hit my head hard on the ground and lost consciousness for a brief moment.”
As the screaming and scurrying continued, Stearns turned his head to see if his girlfriend was still with him. He saw her on the ground and went to pick her up, telling her, “We have got to get out of here.’”
When she wasn’t feeling well enough to go on, he took her behind a tree in Mill Creek Park. Both thought it was a safe place, that in the park they would be OK.
With Ragsdale’s back to the tree, Stearns crouched down in front of her.
“When is your birthday?” Stearns asked. “What day is it?”
She had hit her head hard and he was checking for signs of a concussion. Her safety and condition was his main concern.
At that point, Ragsdale saw something from her right field of vision. It was coming fast, flying past her.
Stearns, who was facing his girlfriend, briefly caught sight of the object out of the corner of his eye. But it was too late.
He would later describe it like “just a bat out of hell.”
Ragsdale saw her boyfriend immediately fly onto his back.
“He was screaming in pain - ‘I’ve been shot in the face. I’ve been shot in the face,’” she said. “I pulled his hands away from his face and it was gushing blood, so much blood.”
She wasn’t sure if he was hit by a real bullet or something else. But she knew they weren’t safe.
After a “huge surge of adrenaline,” Ragsdale got Stearns on his feet and said, “Let’s get out of here.
“It felt like we were under attack,” she said. “That we were in a war.”
HELP FROM STRANGERS
A small group of protesters, with jugs of milk and water, went through the crowd trying to help those who may have taken tear gas to the face or parts of their body.
Toast Fay, 25, who is transgender and goes by the pronoun they, was in that group. They have been at every protest.
On Saturday afternoon, Fay said that they were taken to the hospital after being maced. Once treated, Fay went back to the protest.
After the tear gas was deployed that evening, “I was calling out, ‘Does anybody need help?’”
They heard someone holler out and went toward that voice.
“It was almost like a horror movie,” Fay said. “(Stearns) turned around and looked at me and his eye was just blood. It was the worst thing I think I’ve ever seen in my whole life.
“When I saw his injury, I froze.”
As others used water to flush Stearns’ eye, Fay went to help Ragsdale, a stranger then.
“Toast held me while I cried,” Ragsdale said. “The harder I cried, Toast was holding me tighter.”
When Ragsdale posted what happened on Facebook earlier this week, she talked of the people who came to help them.
“In all of this tragedy, I find warmth and light in the response we got to these cries,” she wrote. “Several of our fellow protesters rushed to our aid. At least three people - please share this and help us identify them so we can thank them - had Sean lay on his back so they could clean out his wound which was gushing blood. Multiple people also came to my aid, as I was screaming and crying at Sean’s feet.
“One of them, my new dear friend Toast …”
At one point, everyone - including Stearns - knew he needed medical attention. As did Ragsdale.
Fay went with the couple.
“I actually remember we walked up to the cops and asked them, how do we get to the ER,” Fay said. “One of them asked, ‘Is he all right?’ That made me angry.”
Fay answered: “No, one of your cops shot him.”
STAYING POSITIVE
Stearns lay in the hospital bed early Sunday and worried, many thoughts racing through his mind.
What damage had been done? What did doctors find? Did the force of the projectile from police hurt my brain?
“I was living with that fear for a couple of hours,” Stearns said.
Because of the coronavirus, Ragsdale wasn’t allowed to be with him. She was cleared and released from the emergency room around 1:30 a.m.
As he waited to hear something, he called her every hour.
When doctors came in, Stearns said he learned all the bones around his left eye were broken. The damage there was severe. But, he was told, nowhere else.
“When I got the news that my brain was good, a lot of the weight lifted off of me. The news about the eye sunk in, I choked up and was sad about it.”
Would he be able to drive, pick up the dogs he walks for a business he helps manage? Could he still run like he loves to do?
The prognosis for all that looks good. And for that, Stearns is grateful.
“My life is definitely going to change,” said Stearns , whose friends set up a GoFundMe page to help with expenses. “I’m trying to take it one day at a time.”
Ragsdale said he is helping her remain positive.
“From the beginning, he was like, ‘I’m alive, I’m alive.’ This ends different for other people,’” Ragsdale said. “When it all happened, that was a real fear. What was going to happen?
The two are proud that they were at the protest.
“We want reform,” Stearns said. “We want people to stop dying at the hands of them, and the misuse and harassment of everybody, but especially people of color.”
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