AUSTIN, Texas It was not unusual for Garrett Foster to be at a protest against police brutality on a Saturday night. And it was not out of character for him to be armed as he marched.

Mr. Foster was carrying an AK-47 rifle as he joined a Black Lives Matter demonstration blocks from the State Capitol in Austin, Texas. Gun-rights supporters on both the left and the right often carry rifles at protests in Texas, a state whose liberal gun laws allow it.

Mr. Foster, wearing a black bandanna and a baseball cap, bumped into an independent journalist at the march on Saturday, and he spoke matter-of-factly about the weapon that was draped on a strap in front of him.

They dont let us march in the streets anymore, so I got to practice some of our rights, Mr. Foster told the journalist, Hiram Gilberto Garcia, who was broadcasting the interview live on Periscope. If I use it against the cops, Im dead, he conceded.

Later that night, Mr. Foster was fatally shot, but not by the police. The authorities said he was killed by a motorist who had a confrontation with protesters.

The police and witnesses said the man in the car turned it aggressively toward the marchers, and Mr. Foster then approached it. The driver opened fire, shooting Mr. Foster three times. He was rushed to a hospital and was later pronounced dead.

Austins police chief, Brian Manley, told reporters on Sunday that as the motorist turned, a crowd of protesters surrounded the vehicle, and some struck the car. The driver, whose name has not been released, then opened fire from inside the car as Mr. Foster approached. Another person in the crowd pulled out a handgun and shot at the vehicle as it sped away.

Minutes after the shooting, the driver called 911 and said he had been involved in a shooting and had driven away from the scene, Chief Manley said. The caller told dispatchers he had shot someone who had approached the drivers window and pointed a rifle at him.

His account is that Mr. Foster pointed the weapon directly at him and he fired his handgun at Mr. Foster, the chief said of the driver.

Both the driver and the other person who fired a weapon were detained and interviewed by detectives. Both had state-issued handgun licenses and have been released as the investigation continues, Chief Manley said.

The shooting stunned a capital city where demonstrations and marches are a proud and commonplace tradition. A GoFundMe page to help Mr. Fosters relatives with his funeral expenses had already raised nearly $100,000 by Sunday evening.

And while Mayor Steve Adler and other officials expressed their condolences on Sunday, at least one police leader criticized Mr. Foster.

On Twitter, Kenneth Casaday, the president of the Austin police officers union, retweeted a video clip of Mr. Foster explaining to Mr. Garcia, the independent journalist, why he brought his rifle. In the clip, Mr. Foster is heard using curse words to talk about all the people that hate us, but are too afraid to stop and actually do anything about it.

In his tweet, Mr. Casaday wrote: This is the guy that lost his life last night. He was looking for confrontation and he found it.

Mr. Garcia, who has filmed numerous Austin demonstrations in recent weeks, captured the chaotic moments of the shooting live on video. Protesters are seen marching through an intersection when a car blares its horn. Marchers appear to converge around the car as a man calls out, Everybody back up. At that instant, five shots ring out, followed shortly by several more loud bangs that echo through the downtown streets.

Mr. Foster, who had served in the military, was armed, but he was not seeking out trouble at the march, relatives and witnesses told reporters. At the time of the shooting, Mr. Foster was pushing his fiance through the intersection in her wheelchair.

Mr. Foster and his fiance, Whitney Mitchell, had been taking part in protests against police brutality in Austin daily since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Mr. Foster is white, and Ms. Mitchell, who is a quadruple amputee, is African-American. She was not injured in the shooting.

He was doing it because he feels really strongly about justice and hes very heavily against police brutality, and he wanted to support his fiance, Mr. Fosters mother, Sheila Foster, said in an interview with Good Morning America, adding that she was not surprised he was armed while at the march.

He does have a license to carry, and he wouldve felt the need to protect himself, Ms. Foster said.

In Texas, it is lawful to carry rifles, shotguns and other so-called long guns on the street without a permit, as long as the weapons are not brandished in a threatening manner; state-issued licenses are required only to carry handguns.

The presence of Mr. Fosters weapon could play a key role in the case if the driver claims that he shot Mr. Foster out of fear for his life, a defense allowed under the so-called stand your ground law in the state.

The shooting reignited a long-running debate in Texas about the open carry movement, in which many men and women carry their rifles and other weapons in public places.

Gun-control supporters say the movement that encourages such displays seeks to intimidate the police and the public, while gun-rights activists defend it as a celebration of their Second Amendment rights.

In a 2016 attack on police officers at a downtown Dallas demonstration, several marchers carried AR-15s and other military-style rifles, and local officials said their presence created confusion for police officers. A single gunman, Micah Johnson, a former Army reservist, killed five officers.

There are multiple layers to this tragedy, but adding guns to any emotional and potentially volatile situation can, and too often does, lead to deadly violence, Ed Scruggs, the board president of Texas Gun Sense, a gun legislation reform group, said in a statement about the Austin shooting.

C.J. Grisham, founder and president of the gun-rights organization Open Carry Texas, defended the practice of bringing rifles to rallies and marches, particularly after numerous attacks around the country in which motorists have driven their cars into demonstrations and injured or killed protesters.

Protesters are under attack from a wide variety of people, Mr. Grisham said. Its unfortunate these days that if youre going to exercise your First Amendment rights, you probably need to be exercising your Second Amendment rights as well.

The shooting occurred shortly before 10 p.m. James Sasinowski, 24, a witness, said it seemed the driver was trying to turn a corner and did not want to wait for marchers to pass.

The driver intentionally and aggressively accelerated into a crowd of people, Mr. Sasinowski said. We were not aggravating him at all. He incited the violence.

Michael Capochiano, another witness, had a slightly different account of what happened. He said he was marching with other demonstrators when he saw a motorist honk his horn and turn toward the crowd, forcing people to scatter.

You could hear the wheels squealing from hitting the accelerator so fast, said Mr. Capochiano, 53, a restaurant accountant. Im a little surprised that nobody got hit.

The car came to a stop after turning from Fourth Street onto Congress Avenue and appeared to strike a traffic pylon. As people shouted angrily at the driver, Mr. Foster walked toward the car, with the muzzle of his rifle pointed downward, he said.

He was not aiming the gun or doing anything aggressive with the gun, Mr. Capochiano said. Im not sure if there was much of an exchange of words. It wasnt like there was any sort of verbal altercations. He wasnt charging at the car.

David Montgomery reported from Austin and Manny Fernandez from Houston. Bryan Pietsch contributed reporting from Andover, Minn.

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Garrett Foster Brought His Gun to Austin Protests. Then He Was Shot Dead. - The New York Times

There really wasnt any doubt about the right decision for me to take, de Havilland would recall. One of the nice things I thought was, If I do win, other actors, feeling frustration such as I feel, will not have to endure that. Theyll take the suspension, without pay, of course, but knowing they will not have to serve that time again. In fact, prominent stars like Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable, whose contracts had been extended because of service in World War II, promptly took advantage of the de Havilland rule, as it came to be known, to forge lucrative freelance careers. In the decades since, entertainers as diverse as Johnny Carson, Courtney Love, Melissa Manchester, and Jared Leto have also invoked the ruling, in contexts from television-talk-show obligations to multimillion-dollar recording contracts.

As for de Havilland, after two years without work, she struck out for Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox and soon enough won her two Oscars, for To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949), while also making a harrowing impression as the victim of a nervous breakdown confined to an asylum in The Snake Pit (1948). But as the 1950s dawned, de Havilland never quite regained her former stardom, and in 1952, she forsook Hollywood for Paris and a marriage to Pierre Galante, the editor of Paris Match magazine. She continued to make occasional appearances in both film and television until 1988, when she played her last role, in The Woman He Loved, a TV movie about the abdication of King Edward VIII.

In later years, de Havilland recounted her adventures with the same kind of sly wit that had impelled her to tell Hal Kern, Gone With the Winds film editor, that she could do a better job of retching in the climactic first-act finale than Vivien Leigh, who played Scarlett OHara and didnt think vomiting was ladylike. (Kern agreed, and its de Havillands desperate sounds that appear on the finished soundtrack). A postWorld War II teatime encounter in her home with a smitten Kennedy, just back from naval service in the Pacific, came to an amusing end. He was quite silent, she would say in a British newspaper interview many years later. His friend did most of the talking. He just sat there, those great big eyes staring. Then when it was time for them to leave, we walked into the hallway and he very decisively opened the doorand it was the closet, and all my old boxes of summer hats and tennis rackets fell on his head. Later, she declined a dinner invitation from Kennedy, claiming she had to study her lines, and when Kennedy spotted her dining that night at Romanoffs with the much older author Ludwig Bemelmans, he was dumbfounded. Do you think it was me walking into the closet? he asked a friend. Do you think thats what really did it?

Near the end of her life, beginning in 2017, de Havilland waged one last legal battle, this time a losing one, as she sued FX and the producer Ryan Murphy over her portrayal by Catherine Zeta-Jones in Feud: Bette and Joan, a miniseries about the rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, in which the de Havilland character is seen reminiscing about Davis. De Havilland claimed the portrayal was an unauthorized use of her name and likeness. But a California appeals court dismissed the case on First Amendment grounds and the California and United States Supreme Courts declined to review the decision.

To the end, de Havilland remained wryly proud of her role as a champion of working actors. I suppose youd like to know how actresses of my day differ from actresses of today, she said to the American Academy of Achievement interviewer in 2006. Well, she went on, cocking an eyebrow as the hint of a smile crept into her twinkling eyes, the actresses of today are richer.

Thanks in no small part to Olivia de Havilland, they are.

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The Unprecedented Bravery of Olivia de Havilland - The Atlantic