Trump Supporter Charged with Assault after Beating Protester at Arizona Rally
A man who punched and kicked a protestor at a Donald Trump rally in Tucson, Arizona, on Saturday was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault, the Tucson Police Department said. Tony Pettway, 32, was released later on Saturday.
The incident was captured on video and initially posted to Twitter by University of Arizona student Alex Satterly, who wrote in a subsequent tweet that the protester, who was white, was carrying a sign showing “trumps face with a confederate flag over it.” According to ABC News, the sign also read “Trump is Bad for America.”
“There’s a disgusting guy, puts on a Ku Klux Klan hat on, he thinks he is cute—he’s a disgusting guy,” Trump told the Tucson crowd. “These are not good people, folks. They’re throwing the flag all over the place.”
“And they’re not really protesters, they’re agitators. And if [Maricopa County] Sheriff Joe [Arpaio] was here, they’d be in jail already. I want to tell you that. They’d be in jail a long time ago.”
Pettway, who is black, was charged with assault with injury. From ABC:
Besides Pettway, Tucson police said a woman, Linda Rothman, 67, was arrested for assault no injury at the event before being released.
Police said it was unknown if Rothman was captured on video at the event. Rothman could not be immediately reached for comment.
A female protester wearing an apparent Ku Klux Klan hood was also escorted out of the rally by law enforcement. A spokesperson for the Tucson police told ABC News the incident with Rothman was unrelated to the female protester wearing the apparent KKK hood.
The woman wearing “apparent KKK hood” was also caught on video.
VIOLENCE at another Donald Trump rally, this time in Tucson, AZ. Man hits and kicks protester: pic.twitter.com/7FWuSeE0Jt
— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorpNBC) March 19, 2016
At the same rally, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields has accused of pulling her so roughly away from his candidate that she was left bruised, was himself reportedly seen manhandling a protester.