Black Lives Matter protester crashes Pete Buttigieg event in Indiana

An event designed to showcase black support for Pete Buttigieg in Indiana went off the rails Wednesday night when a Black Lives Matter protester rushed the stage and was nearly clobbered by a cane-wielding senior citizen.

The fracas was caught on camera by local network WSBT 22, showing the protester, wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt, charging toward the front of the room where South Bend Councilwoman Sharon McBride was speaking.

“Who chose these people as black leaders?” the man yelled out — as a person in the audience stood up, positioned a cane over their head and took aim at the belligerent event crasher.

McBride and others managed to thwart the cane attack.

The protester then wrestled the microphone away from McBride, shouting into it, “Who organized this? We have a police crisis in this town. Why are we talking about Pete Buttigieg? What kind of nonsense is this?”

Other video shows more Black Lives Matter protesters congregated with signs in the back of the room.

Buttigieg, a Democratic presidential candidate in the 2020 election, did not attend the event. Spokeswoman Marisol Samayoa told the South Bend Tribune that the event was not organized by his campaign.

Lis Smith, the campaign’s senior communications adviser, tweeted that the protester was a Bernie Sanders supporter.

“It’s deeply depressing that @BernieSanders’ supporters have gone from harassing @PeteButtigieg‘s staffers of color online to harassing our supporters of color in real life, but here we are,” she wrote.

In a statement to NBC News, Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said the “campaign does not support the disruption of any candidates’ events, and we condemn anyone who does so.”

The openly gay mayor of South Bend has dominated recent New Hampshire and Iowa polls but has also struggled to garner support among black voters in places like South Carolina.