Police in St. Louis executed a search warrant on Mark and Patricia McCloskey.
The McCloskeys recently became infamous on the internet. A now-viral video shows them pointing guns and shouting at Black Lives Matter protesters near their property.
A group of some 300 protesters had marched through the McCloskeys’ affluent Central West End neighborhood in St. Louis on June 28. The couple says they felt their lives were in danger.
As a result of those homeowners brandishing guns during the recent protest, St. Louis police applied for warrants.
“St. Louis Police Chief John Hayden on Tuesday told News 4 they applied for warrants…The guns were turned over to police as evidence,” reported KMOV.
Chief Hayden told KMOV that he thinks the couple’s hostility is frightening. “I don’t want to see guns out when people are very hostile and angry at each other. Those are recipes for violence, so again we applied on warrant, there’s been follow up information and we are waiting on the decision on the warrant application.”
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Consequently, police executed a search warrant at the McCloskey’s home. It took place on Friday night in St Louis’s affluent Central West End neighborhood. Police seized the rifle that Mark McCloskey was holding in the now-viral video.
However, according to the McCloskeys, they had reason to brandish their weapons.
“It was shocking. The gate came in. Seemingly everybody in the world came forward. I think the estimate is 300-500 people,” Mark McCloskey said to Fox News on Tuesday. Protesters sometimes brandish their own makeshift weapons, including sports equipment and similar.
“They came right towards us. We were preparing to have dinner on the porch and we were literally 70 feet from the gate. By the time we got our guns, by the time I got my gun, the crowd was probably 30 or 40 feet from us. We thought it was the end. People were screaming everything,” said McCloskey.
The interviewer asks Patricia McCloskey what the protestors shouted at them. She said: “That they were going to kill us, they were going to come in there, they were going to burn down the house, they were going to be living in our house after I was dead.”
However, was that enough cause to brandish weapons against the protesters?
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