While the police struggled with another day of disturbances in the center of Los Angeles, several Waymo autonomous taxis were burned, sending thick black smoke feathers that undoubted in the air.
The dramatic images were captured during an afternoon of clashes between large groups that protested by immigration raids by the Trump administration and the Los Angeles Police who tried to order the order.
The protesters converged in the area of the Civic Center or in the center of Los Angeles on Sunday morning, shedding on the 101 highway around 3:30 pm the road closed to traffic for several hours while the officers of the California road patrol worked to push the protesters.
A group of protesters descended in five Waymo Taxis on Los Angeles Street between Arcadia and Alameda streets around 5 pm.
The tires were cut, the broken windows and the anti-schags remained in spray on the autonomous taxis, three of which caught fire.
The protesters swarmed around the vehicles, took the doors and trampled the windshields. A man with a mask on his face broke the windows of the cars with a skateboard. Another seemed to wear improvised flamethrowers to put the interior of a flame car.
As the cars were consumed by the flames, some people were seen throwing electric scooters from Lima to the burning shells, while others retired from the burning scene. At one time, the beset the Waymos, who touch their horns in the coordinated cacophony, punctuated by the manifestantes channels and the buzz of police helicopters above.
The Los Angeles Fire Department responded to the vehicle Fire, while the Los Angeles Police Department warned people who stayed away from the area and an acre smell in the air.
“The burning of lithium -ion batteries release toxic gases, including hydrogen fluoride, which represents risks to responders and nearby,” LAPD said in a statement.
Waymo’s electric and autonomous taxis fleet has become a family view on Los Angeles roads. A Waymo spokesman told The Times that the company was in contact with the police regarding the incident.
After its launch in San Francisco and Phoenix, Waymo blessed Los Angeles in November. It attracted an initial waiting list of around 300,000 people before becoming an AV sheet for anyone who downloaded the application of the service, a company spokesman said in January.
As of January, Waymo had already driven 1.9 million miles In Los Angeles. Despite their growing popularity, cars have been frequent objectives for vandals.
In January, a group destroyed one of the driver without Beverly Grove. In February 2024, a Waymo caught fire with fireworks in the San Francisco Chinatown neighborhood. In July, a resident of Castro Valley, accused of destroying 17 Waymos in San Francisco, was in the course of three days, according to San Francisco Chronicle.
