A grand jury in St. Louis on Tuesday ind!cted Mark and Patricia McCloskey on counts of exhi-biting a we*pon and ta-mpering with evidence four months after footage circulated showing the couple pointing g*ns at Bla-ck Lives Matter prote-sters outside their home.
The couple’s attorney, Joel Schwartz, said the grand jury reached the decision after the McCloskeys appeared before a judge earlier in the day, NBC affiliate KSDK reported.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner had issued fe-lony cha-rges aga!nst the couple in June for unlawful use of a we-apon. The grand jury added the ta-mpering-with-evidence charge on Tuesday.
In the now-viral videos from the June incident, the couple can be seen standing outside their home, each holding a f!rearm — Mark McCloskey with an AR-15 rifle and Patricia McCloskey with a handg*n.
Soon after the footage circulated on social media, the couple told CBS affiliate KMOV that they pointed their g*ns at protes-ters in self-defe-nse.
“I was te*rified that we’d be mu*dered within seconds. Our house would be bu-rned down, our pets would be k!lled,” Mark McCloskey said in the interview. President Trump def*nded the couple, arg-uing they were “going to be be-aten up badly if they were lucky.”
The McCloskeys were then invited to speak at the Republican National Convention in August, with Patricia McCloskey cla!ming that a win for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in November would “bring cr!me, lawlessness, and low-quality apartments into now-thriving suburban neighborhoods.”
St. Louis police last month issued summonses to nine prote-sters for tre-spassing onto a private street during the June incident. Police spokesperson Evita Caldwell told The Associated Press at the time that authorities were still deciding whether to file formal cha-rges aga-inst the dem*nstrators.
The AP reported that about 300 people were prote-sting in the area, with the group ma-rching onto a private street.Prote-sters have said that a gate to the street was open, though the McCloskeys cla!med that the dem*nstrators br-oke through.
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