National Guard troops deployed to the US capital found broken glass in their pizza delivery, the Pentagon has confirmed, as nationwide protests against police brutality escalate into calls to get rid of law enforcement altogether.
Some 1,500 troops from South Carolina, Indiana, Maryland and Tennessee were sent to the capital last week to reinforce 1,300 members of the DC National Guard deployed to assist law enforcement with restoring order, as George Floyd protests escalated into looting and arson for several nights.
When two of the South Carolina soldiers ordered pizza delivered to the Marriott Marquis Hotel, where they were staying, they found shards of glass baked inside. They did not eat the pizza and were not injured, the Charleston Post and Courier reported, citing the Department of Defense.
Two South Carolina National Guardsmen ordered a pizza during their stay in the nation's capital.
— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) June 10, 2020
“The command says that the soldiers are OK, and that this was the only incident to their knowledge,” SCNG spokeswoman Captain Jessica Donnelly told The Post and Courier. She added that the soldiers were advised to file a police report. Washington, DC’s Metro Police Department told reporters there was no such report on file yet.
DC was one of the cities where protests over the death of Floyd – a Minnesota man who died after a Minneapolis police officer was filmed kneeling on his neck for almost nine minutes last month – escalated into vandalism, looting and arson for several days. The violence culminated in the torching of a federal building on Lafayette Square, just outside the White House, and damage to a nearby historic church. Media and local authorities condemned President Donald Trump’s crackdown on the protests, however.
Your anti-military rhetoric and actions—including proudly booting out of DC hotels in the middle of the night exhausted soldiers putting their lives on the line to protect our nation’s capital—incites this type of violence. https://t.co/XAuGBz6mlD
The protests had another consequence. As thousands of people gathered without regard for “social distancing” guidelines and lockdown orders, often without face masks, some of them may have spread the coronavirus. An unspecified number of DC guardsmen tested positive for Covid-19, local media reported earlier this week.
“We can confirm that we have had COVID-19 positive tests,” Air Force Lieutenant-Colonel Brooke Davis, spokeswoman for DC National Guard, told DCist on Tuesday. She declined to give any numbers, though, citing “operational security.”
