Activists said a Dakota Access pipeline protester could have her arm amputated after suffering an injury from a small explosion Sunday night, and protesters and law enforcement officials accused each other of being responsible.
Images shared by activists on Facebook showed a young woman sitting in a vehicle with a gory arm injury. A bone was visible.
The woman was one of 26 people that activists said Monday had been taken to the hospital for their injuries after a clash between protesters and police Sunday night. Police had doused protesters with a low-pressure water cannon as temperatures dipped below freezing.
One of the pipeline protest leaders, Dallas Goldtooth, said on Facebook on Monday that a young woman named Sophia Wilansky “was struck directly by a concussion grenade last night on the front lines” of a protest on a bridge near Cannon Ball, N.D
But a Morton County, N.D., Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman said police had not used any concussion grenades during a clash with pipeline protesters on Sunday, contradicting several reports from activists.
“It wasn’t from our law enforcement, because we didn’t deploy anything that should have caused that type of damage to her arm,” said sheriff’s spokeswoman Maxine Herr, who said medical officials first encountered the injured woman away from the action, at a nearby casino. “We’re not sure how her injury was sustained.”
Herr suggested that the woman may have been injured while protesters were “rigging up their own explosives” — propane bottles to be thrown at police. None of those propane bottles exploded, and “the only explosion the officers heard was on the protesters’ side,” Herr said.
No one was arrested for making or throwing explosives, she said.
Sunday night’s clash was the latest in a months-long confrontation between protesters and police over an oil pipeline being built near tribal lands, where hundreds of Native Americans and others have gathered to protest.
The showdown centered at Backwater Bridge, which has been blocked by burned-out vehicles from a previous protest. Police have said the vehicles are not safe to move until the bridge is examined for damage, and activists have complained that the lack of bridge access is blocking travel for local residents.