„As people kept criticizing, the officer got angrier and angrier and started to curse at people in the crowd and jumped up and ran toward the crowd and started hitting people,“ Raffaele said. „I was the first person he hit. It was a full-force, open-hand blow to the front of my throat. If I hadn‘t moved my head back when I was being hit, I think I would have been killed on the spot. That‘s how hard I was hit, and I am saying that from the perspective of someone who was trained in the Army on hand-to-hand combat.“