ST. LOUIS — Mark McCloskey, the armed homeowner who went viral on Sunday night after he and his wife defended their property from rioters, said during an interview on Monday that the rioters threatened him and his family and that his rifle was the only thing that saved him.
McCloskey, who is a lawyer, noted in an interview with a local news station that the rioters broke down a gate to the community and illegally trespassed on their private property, Daily Wire reported.
“I went inside I got a rifle … because as soon as I said ‘this is private property,’ those words enraged the crowd,” McCloskey said. “Horde, an absolute horde came through the smashed-down gates, coming right at the house. … And then I stood out there, the only thing we said is, ‘This is private property, go back, private property, leave now.’ At that point everybody got enraged, there were people wearing body armor.”
“One person pulled out a loaded pistol magazine and he clicked them together and he said, ‘You’re next,’” McCloskey said. “We were threatened with our lives, threatened with the house being burned down, my office building being burned down, even our dog’s life being threatened. It was about as bad as you can get. You know, I really thought it was the storming of Bastille, that we would be dead and the house would be burned and there was nothing we could do about it. It was a huge and frightening crowd and they broke in the gate and they were coming at us.”
McCloskey said that the damage to the gate was so severe that the community’s trustees had to come out and use chains to put the gate back up, and that it was “broken in half.”
“There’s nothing public in Portland Place. Being inside that gate is like being in my living room,” McCloskey said. “It was a big crowd and they were aggressive, wearing body armor and screaming at us and threatening to harm us and how they were going to be living in our house after they killed us.”
McCloskey said that he has received death threats from the incident and slammed the fringe activists, who were protesting the city’s mayor for doxxing residents who support defunding the police, for engaging in hypocrisy by doxxing him and his family, Daily Wire reported.
“It is interesting to me that the very people that are asking the mayor to resign for doxxing people have now put all of my information all over the web, everywhere in the world,” McCloskey said. “Is there some hypocrisy there?”
“The only thing that stopped the crowd from approaching the house was when I had that rifle and I was holding it,” McCloskey later said. “That was the only thing that stemmed the tide.”
McCloskey later criticized the fringe activists, saying, “There’s mayhem in the city every night, you never hear about it, there will be dozens of shootings, multiple deaths, no one seems to care about those black lives, but you know it’s when there is political capital to be made from somebody’s death that that death matters, no other life matters that I can see.”
“You know, I do civil rights cases,” McCloskey continued. “Right now I’m representing a young man who was assaulted by the police who’s sitting in prison right now for being involved in the car accident after which the police came and assaulted him. It’s on video. I’m not some kind of extreme you know anti-Black Lives Matter guy. I do these cases, I’ve been doing them for decades. I mean I have on the wall of my conference room, I’ve got an anti-slavery broadsheet, the abolitionist broadsheet from 1832 has been there as long as I own this building. I mean I’m not the enemy of people that really care about black lives, but I’m apparently the enemy of the terrorists and the Marxist that are running this organization.”
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ORIGINAL REPORT:
ST. LOUIS — Armed residents in an affluent St. Louis neighborhood are seen guarding their property on Sunday evening as demonstrators marched through the streets chanting at them.
Journalist Daniel Shular recorded a video of a couple and posted it on Twitter, writing: “A couple has come out of their house and is pointing guns at protesters in their neighborhood.”
Other videos of the incident that were available online showed demonstrators screaming obscenities at the couple and threatening to take their firearms away from them, Daily Wire reported. The man was holding a rifle and the woman possessed a handgun.
A couple has come out of their house and is pointing guns at protesters in their neighborhood #StLouis #lydakrewson pic.twitter.com/ZJ8a553PAU
— Daniel Shular (@xshularx) June 29, 2020
It appeared as though the demonstrator’s desired final destination was the mayor’s house, where they repeatedly called on her to resign, according to the report.
Here’s that gate… pic.twitter.com/2PKoA8l8LF
— EducatëdHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) June 29, 2020
The calls for St. Louis Democrat Mayor Lyda Krewson to resign began on Saturday after a news conference where she read during a Facebook Live video the names and addresses of residents who were calling to defund the police.
Krewson later issued an apology for her actions, KMOV reported.
“In an effort to be transparent and accessible to the public during the Covid-19 pandemic, for more than three months now I have been doing tri-weekly community updates on Facebook,” the mayor’s statement read. “Tonight, I would like to apologize for identifying individuals who presented letters to me at City Hall as I was answering a routine question during one of my updates earlier today. While this is public information, I did not intend to cause distress or harm to anyone. The post has been removed.”
Protesters have stopped at the Mayor’s house #StLouis #LydaKrewson pic.twitter.com/0jRYzzr8cI
— Daniel Shular (@xshularx) June 29, 2020
Hundreds of angry demonstrators that gathered outside the mayor’s home chanted: “Resign Lyda, take the cops with you.”
The protest is on the move, marching down Kingshighway. pic.twitter.com/Z1ZUgFa9Ae
— Alexis Zotos (@alexiszotos) June 28, 2020
“Resign Lyda, take the cops with you.” That’s the chant right now.
Today a spokesperson for Mayor Lyda Krewson said she has no intention of resigning. @KMOV pic.twitter.com/eNnz7iqhRx
— Alexis Zotos (@alexiszotos) June 29, 2020
Over the weekend, Black Lives Matter activists in California entered a residential neighborhood in Beverly Hills where they shouted “eat the rich” and “abolish capitalism now,” reported the Daily Wire.
The Beverly Hills Police Department tweeted: “The unlawful assembly in the area of Rexford Dr & Carmelita Ave has ended with arrests being made. Protesters have now left the City.”
In an interview late last week, Hawk Newsome, head of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, told Fox News host Martha MacCallum that “if this country doesn’t give us what we want then we will burn down the system and replace it.”
Trying to parse words, Newsome claimed he didn’t condone nor condemn rioting, Law Officer reported.
At the conclusion of the interview, Newsome told MacCallum, “I just want black liberation and black sovereignty, by any means necessary.”
