Sirens blared and smoke blew from charred buildings as Carrie Thomas sat bereft on the front steps of her south Minneapolis home. Blocks away, people looted stores in daylight without police intervention. Volunteers swept up broken glass.
"This is my home, this is my city," said Thomas, who lives on 27th Avenue. "It's literally a war zone. It is absolutely sick."
People living in the working-class neighborhood around the epicenter of Wednesday night's protests, police clashes and riots encountered a changed neighborhood when they ventured outside the next morning.
They saw the stores they relied on for groceries and supplies smashed and burned. They saw fires that had smoldered for hours. Onlookers clogged the streets to take pictures and help clean up the mess. Some loaded up carts with merchandise from Target, Dollar Tree and Cub Foods, which appeared devoid of workers after the Wednesday night crowds broke in.
"It's very sudden to see how the neighborhood just changed in a period of three, four hours," said Elizabeth Lopez, holding her 2-year-old daughter outside her home off Lake Street.
"It was a neighborhood that was building new buildings and everything, and then suddenly they were all on fire," she said. "I don't understand how peaceful protesting became like a nightmare for this neighborhood."
Mohamed Abdi saw the chaos unfold from his apartment in the shopping center with Target and Cub Foods that was hit the hardest by the vandalism.
"I'm not safe, you're not safe," Abdi said. "I don't know when the area will be safe again."