Protesters confront police at Friday's G20 protest march through downtown Toronto. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)

By Lianne Elliott, CBC News

Peaceful protest marches can quickly turn violent, without warning.

CBC reporter Jasmin Seputis witnessed this first-hand while covering the large protest march that wove through downtown Toronto on Friday, in advance of today's G20 summit. Without a moment's notice, Seputis, who was doing radio reports for Here and Now, found herself caught between a violent skirmish involving protesters and police. She was pushed and shoved, and punched in the arm.

"One officer was pushing me one way, one was pushing me the other way. It was an out-of-control situation," she recalled. "They didn't know where to put me and the protesters were coming at me."
Jasmin Seputis was caught in a violent protest on Friday. (CBC)
The protest had started as a festive one, with marchers singing, dancing and waving banners as they made their way along Carlton Street, heading west to Yonge.

But then police on bicycles, lined up along Yonge, moved in to arrest one of the protesters - a deaf man named Emomotimi Azorbo. At that point, the crowd became angry.

"They started to surge and push and say, 'Let him go, let him go,'" Seputis said.

Seputis, caught in the middle, said she doesn't know who punched her.

"It happened so quickly," she said, explaining that she wasn't badly hurt. "I guess my adrenaline was so high, I can hardly remember how it all happened. I was pushed this way and that way and thought, 'I have to get out.'"

Officers finally were able to open a little space between their bikes and let Seputis squeeze out.

"I was frightened," Seputis says. "The fear was real. The potential was there."