California Highway Patrol has called the blow dart attacks on pedestrians from the bridge seemingly “random”. The dart, which was about 5 inches long, appeared to have been fired from a blow gun, authorities said.
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Police are investigating after two people walking on the Golden Gate Bridge near San Francisco were hit with blow darts.
Around 2:45 p.m. a bicycle office patrolling the bridge was flagged down in the Golden Gate Bridge Vista Point parking lot by a man who had been shot in the thigh with a dart, which penetrated one to two inches, according to the CHP.
While officers were speaking with the first victim, a second person approached the group and said that she had also been hit by a dart.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, CHP spokesman Andrew Barclay said “I’ve never heard of something like this”. The two victims were evaluated by paramedics and released on scene. “Neither of them had any arguments”.
He added: “It was definitely one of those situations where you … wonder why would somebody do this”.
Authorities don’t believe the darts are poisonous and think they were shot out of a moving auto on the bridge. “It is really just reckless, careless, there’s no goal to fire those darts… without the intention of harming somebody”. Barclay told the paper that investigators plan to test the darts for risky chemicals.
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CBS San Francisco reports that investigators are checking any potentially relevant footage while they work on identifying the party responsible.
