Second man alleges he was blinded at rally

Another protester was hit by a projectile shot by officers at anti-ICE demonstration in O.C.

- BY RUBEN VIVES

ALLEN J. SCHABEN Los Angeles Times BRITAIN Rodriguez: I was struck by a less-lethal round during a demonstration.

Homeland Security officers who blinded a young protester by shooting a less-lethal projectile at close range in Santa Ana apparently shot a second man in the face that night, blinding him too.

Britain Rodriguez, 31, a resident of Orange County, said he was standing at the bottom of some steps with other demonstrators when federal officers above opened fire at them, hitting him in the face.

“I remember hitting the ground and feeling like my eye exploded in my head,” he said.

In a video his girlfriend shared with The Times, Rodriguez can be seen on the ground, holding his face as he screams in agony before demonstrators escort him from the area.

“I can’t see, I got shot in the eye, I can’t see,” Rodriguez says before noticing blood on his hand. “I’m bleeding.”

Rodriguez and his girlfriend, Ale, who declined to give her last name, said the officers gave no warning before firing at them. She said she was hit in the chest with a less-lethal round but was not injured.

“That's when I started yelling at them,” she said. “I'm like holding a sign that says, ‘Stop kidnapping my neighbors’ and a candle; I am no threat to any of [those] guys.”

She said after getting shot she heard her boyfriend screaming.

The video suggests Rodriguez was struck at the same time that 21-year-old Kaden Rummler was hit in the face. Rodriguez can be heard screaming in the background just as Rummler falls to the ground.

In a statement released by Rummler this week and read by a member of the social justice organization Dare to Struggle, which organized one of the protests that day, he said doctors found pieces of plastic and glass in his skull as well as metal in his stomach lining, and pulled a piece of plastic “the size of a nickel” from his injured eye.