Tension at funerals for Orlando victims with protest, irate driver

Funerals for two of the 49 victims killed in the shooting at a nightclub in Florida were marked by tense scenes on Saturday, as an impatient driver was accused of injuring two law enforcement officers and one burial took place under the watch of anti-gay protesters.
Two Osceola County Sheriff’s deputies on motorcycles were injured at the funeral procession for Jean Carlos Mendez in Kissimmee, Florida, some 20 miles (32 km) south of Orlando, when a driver cut through the cortege and struck them with her car, according to a statement on the sheriff’s Facebook page. The deputies were taken to the hospital, where both were in stable condition, said the sheriff’s spokeswoman, Twis Lizasuain.
At the funeral of another victim, Christopher Leinonen, at a church close to the center of Orlando, a handful of protesters from the Kansas-based anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church stood silently for about 45 minutes. They were blocked from view of those attending the funeral by about 200 counter-protesters, who cheered when the Westboro members left.
Members of the Orlando Shakespeare Theater used large “angel wings,” measuring 8 feet wide and reaching 3 feet over shoulder height, to block out the protesters. The wings, made of white cloth and plastic piping by volunteers from the theater’s costume and set shops, first surfaced at the 1998 funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay man murdered in Wyoming.

Source: Arab News