Baton Rouge protestor in viral photo: 'I am a vessel'

Her stance, that of calm poise in the face of an intimidating row of armored cops, caught the eye of photographer Jonathan Bachman on Saturday and the resulting image has since been splashed on news sites across the globe.

Now, the woman, captured during a  Black Lives Matter protest in Baton Rouge in a photograph some are likening to the snap of the Tiananmen Square stand-off in Beijing in 1989, has been named.

She's 28-year-old Ieshia Evans, and she says she's a "vessel" from God.

Evans faced off against the heavily armed officers in her summer dress Saturday, amid protests against the killing of black men by police across the country.

Her demeanor and quiet resolve, at the end of a week of heightened tension, brought her praise from onlookers.

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Evans has since shunned the attention though.

"I just need you people to know. I appreciate the well wishes and love, but this is the work of God," she wrote on her Facebook page after she'd been identified.

"I am a vessel! Glory to the most high!"

"I am a vessel! Glory to the most high! I'm glad I'm alive and safe. And that there were no casualties that I have witnessed first hand."

Evans, a mother and a nurse from New York, traveled to Baton Rouge after the killing of Alton Sterling because she wanted a better world for her 5-year-old son, her friend Natasha Haynes told reporters.

Bachman told the BBC that he was photographing demonstrators outside the Baton Rouge police headquarters when he saw the woman step onto the road. "She was making her stand," he said. 

"She said nothing and was not moving. It was clear that the police were going to have to detain her."

Evans was jailed overnight and released Sunday, according to the Daily Mail, which spoke to her from Louisiana.

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