As we await further details from federal investigators about a strange incident that capped off a tense day Thursday in Oakland outside the gates of Alameda’s Coast Guard Island, the Chronicle has obtained some strange surveillance video.
All that we knew on Friday was that a U-Haul truck which may not have had any earlier connection to the day-long protest against a planned — but cancelled at the last minute — immigration operation by federal agents who were staging on Alameda’s Coast Guard Island, appeared to back up aggressively or erratically toward federal agents and ignore calls to stop. Agents then opened fire, injuring the driver of the U-Haul and one other person, and the U-Haul then sped away from the scene.
We also knew the driver was later found and arrested, and had been shot in the stomach, and was taken for a mental health evaluation.
Now, as the Chronicle reports, we can observe a bit more about what happened right after the shots rang out, via some surveillance video taken nearby, though the situation remains bizarre.
Police officers investigate a U-Haul truck that was involved in an incident outside of Coast Guard Island Alameda on October 23, 2025 in Oakland, California. U.S. Coast Guard police opened fire on a U-Haul truck after it backed up a ramp at the entrance to Coast Guard Island Alameda, where US Customs and Border Patrol agents are staying. Earlier in the day, U.S. President Donald Trump told San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie that he was suspending planned immigration raids in San Francisco. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
It seems that after the U-Haul truck fled the scene, it didn’t travel far at all — the shots can be heard on the surveillance video, and then minutes later, the truck is seen pulling up on Dennison Street, just a block or so from the Coast Guard base entrance, backing up to park along the street. This seems to have been unnoticed by the agents and protesters at the base entrance, because no one was pursuing the vehicle.
A dark-colored sedan can then be seen pulling up to the driver’s side of the U-Haul truck, and someone is seen helping the driver into the backseat of the car, before it then drives off.
Moments later, some individuals who had been witnesses to the shooting come upon the U-Haul on foot, and begin observing the bullet holes on it, and some blood, as they can be heard saying to each other.
Those individuals can then be heard flagging down a police vehicle as it is passing moments later.
The FBI has not released any information about the suspect driving the U-Haul, or what they have learned in their investigation.
The situation outside the base, while volatile, had remained largely peaceful on Thursday, though two protesters suffered minor injuries early Thursday morning at the protest was ramping up — one who had his foot run over by a passing car, and one who was reportedly hit in the chin by a projectile smoke bomb shot by federal agents.
Within hours, SF Mayor Daniel Lurie and President Trump himself were confirming that a planned crackdown on undocumented immigrants in the Bay Area, or in San Francisco itself, had been called off — following phone conversations Trump had with Lurie, and billionaires Marc Benioff and Jensen Huang.