I believe there is a principle expressed online, in somewhat more terse terms, that certain people mess around with the wrong entities and find out the hard way what happens.

Meet the anonymous face of the “mess around, find out” axiom in the 2025 Los Angeles ICE riots: Idiot Guy in Maroon Shirt.

Idiot Guy in Maroon Shirt (from here on referred to as IGiMS for brevity) was one of the people who took to the streets of America’s second-most populous city after Immigration and Customs Enforcement did the unthinkable and decided to enforce immigration law by detaining people illegally in this country. (The nerve.)

As you’ve no doubt have seen and heard by now, this led to to the return of the “fiery but mostly peaceful protest,” with the media insisting that no serious lawlessness was occurring, and if there was, it was all probably President Donald Trump’s fault, anyway.

As it turns out, 2025 is quite a different year than 2020 was — as IGiMS found out on Friday when he tried to stop one of the ICE vehicles leaving Los Angeles’ Fashion District after a raid.

KTLA-TV was reporting on one of the raids as agents were “trying to collect evidence” from inside the building where it happened. Then, as the reporter apparently inside the station’s helicopter noted, three vehicles departed “from the parking lot, with those people that were detained from the business just moments ago.”

“And here comes the crowd,” the reporter said, while noting that most people were smart enough to stay away from the crowd control cops.

Except for, of course, IGiMS, who was described as a “person … person trying to stand right in front of that SUV here.”

“Ah,” he said, audibly feeling for IGiMS for being, well, an idiot.

“It’s such a dangerous situation here, and it’s really not going to do him any good to be standing there, possibly getting ran over by agents.”

Except he wasn’t standing there — he was running backwards with his hands on the hood of the white SUV, not seeming to get the hint.

“I pretty much guarantee that this SUV is not going to stop,” KTLA’s reporter said.

He was correct! Instead, IGiMS managed to fall down in front of the vehicle, which backed up and drove away.

“Now he is just — ooh — partly ran over by the SUV … looks like a bicycle was also struck in the crosswalk,” the reporter said in the viral clip.

Yes. Shame, that:

WARNING:  The following videos contain images that may be disturbing for some readers. 

It doesn’t appear that this man was hurt, as a video from KABC-TV showed IGiMS getting back up as another protester threw a bike at the SUV:

However, it’s unclear whether he’s among the injured.

This was hardly the only person to get in the way of a law enforcement officer during the five days that the riots have currently been going on.

At this point, even Los Angeles thinks it’s a good idea to get this sort of thing under control, with an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew in the city and mass arrests on Tuesday into Wednesday, CNN reported.

This isn’t just a win for the law-abiding residents of Los Angeles, but for all the would-be IGiMSes out there. After all, messing around can end with you finding out in a very painful way — and our IGiMS here was lucky to be able to walk away from this apparently relatively unscathed.

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