Rumors are swirling over footage showing a shadowy figure dubbed 'umbrella man' breaking windows during the Minneapolis protests

• A viral video of a man breaking windows in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has stirred up a frenzy online.
• The "umbrella man" took a hammer to several Auto Zone windows on Wednesday, hours before the store went up in flames.
• Some users speculate he is an "agent provocateur," or undercover police officer.
• "The person in the video is not our officer," the St. Paul Police Department said in a social media statement.

The man was wearing a gas mask. In one hand he held an umbrella, black like his clothing. In the other, a hammer.

The man took the hammer to several windows of an AutoZone store in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Wednesday, video footage shows. That was before the store was set on fire, and before flames engulfed much of the city during demonstrations protesting the police killing of George Floyd.

The footage went viral, and now the man is the subject of scrutiny on social media. Some people speculate that he was not a protester, but a police officer from neighboring St. Paul.

The St. Paul Police Department rejected the speculation: "The person in the video is not our officer." The Minneapolis Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The man was seen breaking four windows before a protester, wearing a pink T-shirt, intervened, stepping between the man and the storefront. He broke another window as a second person intervened.

"Those cops will come for you if you're pulling that crap," Brad Svenson, a Minneapolis man who caught the incident on video, said while recording. "That's garbage, pulling that s---."

Another video on social media shows the pink T-shirted man chasing the man away. "Guy just came with a hammer and smashed the windows," said the woman who recorded the scene.

"Are you a f---ing cop?" someone can be heard asking the man.

But in another video, filmed the same day, the two men appear to be walking and talking together.

The incident has whipped up a social media frenzy. Some users called the man an "agent provocateur."

Others claimed — without evidence — that the man's umbrella is "a known tactic to let police helicopters ID cops undercover." (That notion seems unlikely, given that the umbrella would also identify a person just as easily to protestors.)

Also, amid social unrest, umbrellas are commonly used to ward off tear gas — notably in Hong Kong, during the 2014 "Umbrella Movement" and during protests over the past year.

For now, speculation about the man's identity is just that.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to make clear the speculation around the man's identity and motives are unconfirmed.