A woman run over by a stolen bus: 11 killed in protests in Colombia against police brutality

A woman was run over Thursday night by a stolen bus in Bogotá amid protests against police violence in Colombia.

The 40-year-old and still unidentified woman became the 11th fatality in demonstrations around the country due to the death of lawyer Javier Ordóñez after his arrest, according to authorities.

"Today we have to say that the death of a woman, run over by a vandal who participated in the theft of a public transport vehicle, causes deep pain," Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said on Friday.

This occurred in the Suba neighborhood, in the northwest of the Colombian capital where, according to witnesses, armed youths forced the driver of a public bus to stop and fled with the vehicle.

A few streets later they lost control and ran over a woman who was not part of the protests, who was walking towards her residence.

Protests in Bogotá for the death of Javier Ordóñez at the hands of the police EFE

Response teams tried to resuscitate her for 30 minutes.

She was taken by police officers to a hospital, where she died shortly thereafter.

On this second night of protests, protesters again attacked 11 police facilities (or CAIs, as they are known in Colombia).

Some were set on fire.

Groups of vandals looted supermarkets and banks.

As of Wednesday, 10 people had died from gunshot wounds in Bogotá and the nearby town of Soacha, but on Thursday there were no deaths from firearms.

It is not clear if all those shots came from the police, but various videos that have gone viral on networks clearly show some police officers shooting at point-blank range at unarmed citizens.

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One of the most serious situations on Thursday occurred in Cajicá, about 30 kilometers (about 19 miles) north of Bogotá, where among the protests the headquarters of that Mayor's Office was looted.

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"This is not the way to protest, this is not the way to react (...) They have destroyed the municipal administration, they have destroyed the police station and they are destroying business premises," said the mayor of the municipality, Fabio Ramírez.

Protests in Colomba against police brutality.EFE

The mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, also asked on her social networks for citizens to demonstrate peacefully, but acknowledged that the police acted improperly in Ordóñez's arrest.

López also said that law enforcement should even publicly apologize, and denounced his own police force for disobeying his instructions.

She herself asked, as the protesters claim, a "reform" to the police.

Others took a more adversarial tone, even warlike. 

Former senator and former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, from the same right-wing party as the current Iván Duque administration, asked for a curfew and the presence of the military to be imposed on the streets.

Uribe is currently serving a house sentence in jail for bribery of witnesses and procedural fraud. 

On the other side of the political spectrum, Gustavo Petro, a former leftist presidential candidate, called for a new national strike, like the ones that took place at the end of 2019, and asked that "the police leadership resign" due to the death of Ordóñez, lawyer and father of two young children. 

Protests and looting also took place in different neighborhoods of Bogotá and the main cities of Cali, Medellín, Cúcuta and Ibagué.

According to the Defense Minister, the two nights of protest left 209 civilians and 194 police officers injured, as well as 60 affected police facilities and 91 destroyed vehicles, mostly public buses, some of which were set on fire.

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41 wagons of the TransMilenio mass transit system were also burned or vandalized, which in the capital serves as a metro or subway.

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In addition, there have been 90 arrests and 11 apprehensions of minors, added the minister. 

With information from El Tiempo and EFE.