Journalist shot by Minneapolis police during 2020 protests dying from injuries
MINNEAPOLIS — A journalist shot by police during the 2020 Minneapolis unrest following the murder of George Floyd is dying from her injuries, friends say.
Linda Tirado was in Minneapolis from out of state covering the protests and rioting when police shot her in the face with a rubber bullet, also known as a "less-lethal" round. She suffered a traumatic brain injury and was blinded in one eye.
"My goggles came off," Tirado told WCCO in 2020. "I had a laceration on my eye so it was a lot of blood. A lot of tear gas. I closed my eyes and started yelling, 'I'm press! I'm press!'"
According to friends and other journalists, Tirado is now in hospice care, her brain injury chipping away at her health for the last four years.
A friend named Noah Berlatsky wrote this week on his Substack, Everything is Horrible, "She lost her eye, and she's been deteriorating slowly since — and now I guess less slowly. She still has some lucid moments, but they're becoming more infrequent."
Jiahong Pan is a local freelance journalist who was with Tirado covering the burning and looting and considers her a mentor. Tirado told them she was dying earlier this year.
"She has been there many, many times for me when I had an issue with a story or just about life," Pan said. "(She's) very direct and brutally honest but also very empathetic."
Tirado won a $600,000 legal settlement from the city of Minneapolis, but she gave $120,000 away to Minneapolis people and community organizations.
"I'd rather have my left eye, but as long as I don't, it's good that some good can come out of it," she told WCCO in 2022.
Last week, Tirado wrote on her Substack, Stories From The Rail, "I feel nothing but joy and peace and pain and fear, all of it all at once so that it bleeds into itself and can only be described as emotion raw and pure and beautiful and perfect, and also fleeting."
WCCO asked the city whether Tirado's settlement resulted in any changes to the city's use of less-lethal rounds. A spokesperson declined to answer.
