A man was arrested for allegedly driving through a crowd of peaceful anti-Donald Trump protestors last week at the the University of Central Missouri, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported Monday.
The man, who police did not name but said is not a student, was accused of accelerating his car during the peaceful protest Thursday by about 150 black students, the paper reported. He will be charged with assault as well as obstruction of law enforcement because he fled the scene, according to the Post Dispatch.
Student protesters also claimed that people spit on them and someone threw a firecracker into the crowd, The Daily Star Journal reported.
Another person was questioned about “menacing behavior” while in a vehicle near the site of the protest, the Post Dispatch reported. None of the incidents resulted in injuries, but both men accused of disrupting the protests are now banned from the campus.
The university’s president, Charles Ambrose, is set to meet with Justice Rappel, a student who said she was spit on, and other protestors to discuss safety concerns, according to The Washington Post.
To all the people who voted in 2012, but stayed home this year, a hearty
#Fuckyouverymuch
I’m glad they have him. I hope they throw the full weight of every applicable law at this person, revoke hid driver’s license for ten years. Also as a condition of whatever plea, he should be made to attend anger management courses and prove he learned, pass the courses.
In my admittedly weak understanding of Missouri law, shouldn’t purposefully driving a car into a crowd of people warrant a greater charge than assault?
I’m pretty sure in Drivers’ Ed he was taught not to try and run over people. So there may be some issues with his ability to follow instructions
There are several levels of assault. Reading the St. Louis paper, it seems they haven’t filed the charges yet, just that they “will pursue…”
They could charge him with assault with a deadly weapon.
Assault with a deadly weapon, at minimum, I would think. Regardless of intent (to kill), any reasonable person (not thinking of the asshole, here) would interpret the action of deliberately driving one’s vehicle into a crowd of people would constitute a potentially lethal danger to those in the crowd. Unless he lost control of the vehicle–and that does not appear to be the case–the deliberative action, IMHO, is attempted maiming or murder.