St. Louis Couple Indicted for Brandishing Guns at Racial Justice Protestors

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who brandished guns at racial justice protestors as they marched by their mansion in June, were indicted today on felony charges of unlawful use of a weapon and evidence tampering.

Lawyer Joel Schwartz said Tuesday afternoon he was told a grand jury indicted his clients but had no further details. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch a St. Louis court clerk said that the indictment was filed Tuesday but she was not authorized to provide a copy.

The McCloskeys, both attorneys, became infamous when video surfaced of them pointing an AR-15 rifle and a semiautomatic handgun at a group of mostly Black demonstrators as they walked up their street on the way to the home of St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson to protest the murder of George Floyd.

A police probable cause statement said protesters feared “being injured due to Patricia McCloskey’s finger being on the trigger, coupled with her excited demeanor” outside their $1.5 million home.

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St. Louis television station KMOV News 4 is reporting that the evidence tampering charge “stems from the pistol held by Patricia McCloskey and later turned over to police by attorney Al Watkins. That gun, Watkins said, had been rendered inoperable but a report obtained by News 4 from the St. Louis Police Crime Lab showed that a prosecutor had instructed the examiners to re-assemble it correctly.”

The incident made the McCloskeys a national symbol of “white fright” and they were widely condemned by the political left. Republicans, on the other hand, held them up as courageous defenders of the Second Amendment and even featured them as speakers at the Republican National Convention.

Outside the Carnahan Courthouse on Tuesday, Mark McCloskey criticized the City Counselor’s Office for not prosecuting protesters. He said the city’s “leftist” government is targeting him and his wife “for doing no more than exercising our 2nd Amendment rights.”

“The government chooses to persecute us for doing no more than exercising our right to defend ourselves, our home, our property and our family and now we’re getting drug here time after time after time and for what?” Mark McCloskey said. “We didn’t fire a shot. People were violently protesting in front of our house and screaming death threats and threats of rape and threats of arson. Nobody gets charged but we get charged.”

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