Old robbery footage misrepresented amid LA anti-deportation protests
- Published on June 10, 2025 at 23:14
- 4 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"Horrifying. LA shop owner attacked and tased by lawless rioters who destroy his store during LA's anti-American sovereignty riots," says a June 8, 2025 post on X.
The post comes from Brandon Straka, one of more than 1,500 people who was convicted in relation to the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol and later pardoned by President Donald Trump.
Similar posts spread across X amid several days of protests that Los Angeles officials said were initially peaceful but punctuated by scattered violence, with demonstrators torching cars and security forces firing tear gas.
The tensions in Los Angeles, home to a large Latino population, were triggered by raids and dozens of arrests of what authorities say are undocumented migrants and gang members. They continued to escalate over several days, with Trump clashing with California leaders as he went over their heads to deploy the state's National Guard and active-duty US Marines to the city.
The upheaval has seen some stores ransacked, according to local media reports and the Los Angeles Police Department, which urged downtown businesses and residents in a June 9 post on X to report any vandalism, damage or looting they observed (archived here and here).
But the video shared by Straka and others online is several months old and unrelated to the anti-deportation protests.
A reverse image search surfaced the same video in local news articles and posts dated to October 2024 (archived here, here and here).
Those reports, and others covering the incident, described a street takeover during the early morning hours of October 6 in which a mob of people violently pushed their way inside a 7-Eleven in Anaheim and pillaged it, assaulting the clerk who tried to keep them out in the process (archived here).
The video was credited to an Instagram user, "@carlos_kickback_3" (archived here). AFP reached out to the account for a comment, but no response was forthcoming.
According to reports, the incident took place at a 7-Eleven on Knott Avenue in Anaheim (archived here). Geolocation of the footage confirms the location (archived here).
The location is several miles away from the complex of federal and municipal buildings near the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, where the protests have centered -- and also from other protest sites in Paramount and Compton.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the tumult in Los Angeles here.
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