LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A YouTube personality was wounded yesterday while recording video outside a synagogue and Jewish high school in the Fairfax district, allegedly by a security guard who was detained and later arrested.
The shooting occurred about noon at the Etz Jacob Congregation/Ohel Chana High School in the 7600 block of Beverly Boulevard, according to Los Angeles police, who confirmed reports that a guard had shot someone in a leg and was detained at the scene.
The wounded person was originally reported by police to be a man in his mid-30s but later identified by the Los Angeles Times as transgender woman Zhoie Perez, known on YouTube as Furry Potato.
Live video footage that appeared to show the shooting was posted on YouTube by user Funny Potato Live. Perez says that she is apart of the First Amendment auditors community on YouTube whose goal is to record videos in public, exercising their First Amendment rights.
According to The Times, Perez said she began streaming the encounter when the guard took his gun out of its holster.
Perez described her injury as a graze wound.
The pricipal of the Etz Jacob Congregation/Ohel Chana High School admitted that the situation worried her and her students.
“An individual was filming our girls at the school. In the building. The perimeter of the building including all the windows and exits. This caused a great deal of anxiety to both our staff and our students,” said principal, Yehudis Farkash. “During the incident we did try to keep the girls calm and the building was placed on lockdown.”
A bystander also gave a comment asking why photos were being taken where the high school girls are.
“I asked her several times, ‘what are you doing? Why are you taking pictures right in the doorway where all these young girls are?’ It’s a synagogue, like you know. She would not respond. She came and got very close and then far and it was bizarre behavior,” said the witness.
The security guard, identified by police as 44-year-old Edduin Zelayagrunfeld, was booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon with a firearm, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.