A photo of a black man carrying an injured white man on his shoulder during a protest between anti-racist and far-right demonstrators in central London on Sunday has gone viral on social media, Reuters reported on Monday. The incident was reported by a photographer who had been covering the protests against the murder of African-American man George Floyd.

The black protestor, identified as Patrick Hutchinson, a personal trainer, shouted “That’s not what we do!” as he carried off the white man, likely a counter-protestor, in a fireman’s carry on his shoulder. Some people in the crowd shouted out that the assault victim was a member of the far-right, but this has not yet been confirmed.

Hutchinson told Channel 4 News that when he arrived at the scene, the man was already lying on the floor. “It was pretty hectic, it was almost like a stampede, there was lots of people,” he said. “There were people trying to protect him but unsuccessfully. And then the guys went in there, they put a little cordon around him to stop him receiving any more physical harm.”

Hutchinson said the man’s life was under threat. “So I just went under, scooped him up, put him on my shoulders and sort of started marching towards the police with him...whilst all the guys were surrounding me and protecting me and the guy I had on my shoulder,” the personal trainer said. He added that he felt blows even as he was carrying the man to safety.

“If the other three police officers who were standing around when George Floyd was murdered had thought about intervening like what we did, George Floyd would be alive today,” Hutchinson said. He credited those who protected him from the crowd as having contributed to taking the white man to safety.

Hutchinson told CNN on Sunday that he helped the man to safety because he did not want the reason for the protests to be undermined with a new narrative like “Black Lives Matters, Youngsters Kill Protestors”.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the London Police said 113 people had been arrested over the weekend and 23 officers were injured, but none of them seriously.

The George Floyd murder

On May 25, four police officials detained Floyd after he had allegedly used a counterfeit bill at a store in Minnesota, United States. Protests grew after a widely shared video showed one of the officers, Derek Chauvin, kneeling for almost nine minutes on Floyd’s neck. Floyd was seen gasping for breath, pleading with the officials saying, “I can’t breathe”. He died on the spot. An autopsy found that he died of asphyxiation due to neck and back compression.

Chauvin was charged with second-degree murder. The three other police officers were charged with aiding and abetting the murder. They are currently lodged in a local jail. All four police officers were fired a day after Floyd’s death.

A Minneapolis judge on June 8 set $1 million (approximately Rs 7.60 crore) as the bail amount for Chauvin. Floyd’s death has sparked international outrage with many protests turning violent across the United States and the United Kingdom.