Scott Olsen (updated)
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Former U.S. Marine Scott Olsen is out of hospital
11.11.11. Occupy Oakland organizers say Olsen, 24, was hit in the head by a tear gas canister fired by police during a downtown Oakland confrontation on October 25. He was admitted to a local hospital in critical condition.
Acting Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan has opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Olsen’s injury but police and city have not said how they believe the Iraq veteran was injured.
More than two weeks later, [on 11.11.11] Olsen was released from inpatient care in time to celebrate Veteran’s Day, Carpenter wrote in a blog post on a website for the group Veterans for Peace.
The Iraq veteran was “still struggling with speech, but is attempting conversations without having the writing instrument out,” on which he had been relying to communicate, Carpenter said in the blog post.
Word of Olsen’s injury reinvigorated the Occupy Wall Street movement across the country, shifted its focus away from New York to Oakland and broadened its aims to include opposing police brutality.
Activists in Oakland and elsewhere took to the streets en masse following his hospitalization, holding candlelight vigils and marches in his honor.
Oct 28 Update: (source)
Scott Olsen, the 24-year-old Iraq War veteran and Occupy Oakland activist who sustained a fractured skull after being shot in the head with a rubber bullet by Oakland riot police, has regained consciousness but “cannot talk” according to friends and family.
Keith Shannon, Olsen’s roommate and fellow Iraq war veteran told reporters:
“He cannot talk right now, and that is because the fracture is right on the speech center of his brain, however, they are expecting he will get that back.”
Shannon added that Olsen’s ”spelling is not near what it used to be and the doctors expect that he will have a full recovery, however, it is going to be a long road ahead for him.” Read the rest of this entry »
