Marla Marcum
Sophia Wilansky, third from left, stands with fellow defendants in the E-13 Police Station in Jamaica Plain.
A young woman who had been arrested during protests against a natural gas pipeline in southwest Boston may lose an arm from wounds sustained during civil disobedience in North Dakota.
Sophia Wilansky, 22, of New York, suffered grievous injury on Sunday in the ongoing confrontation near a Sioux reservation between "water protectors" and law enforcement officers. Opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline say the route - which goes under the Missouri River - threatens the water supply and sites sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux.
Both sides blame the other for Wilansky's injuries, as reported by The Guardian. Protesters say a concussion grenade fired by police is to blame. The North Dakota Highway Patrol says protesters were responsible for the explosion.
The incident has local resonance. Wilansky was scheduled to be in West Roxbury District Court -- i.e. the court in JP along the Arborway -- to face charges in connection with a June protest. Wilansky and others lay down in a trench to stop construction of the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline. While the project is not in JP itself, the cause has been taken up by many neighborhood residents, some of whom themselves have been arrested.