A man is facing criminal charges after police say he assaulted a protester being removed from a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in North Carolina, local television station WRAL reported on Thursday.
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After Jones was hit, he was thrown to the ground by law-enforcement officials who were escorting him out of the event.
Inside Edition tracked down 78-year-old John McGraw during the rally and asked him if he liked the event.
Jones said officers started to escort them out when one of the women in their group started shouting at the beginning of Trump’s rally.
“That has nothing to do with us”, campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said. I was basically in police custody and got hit”, Jones said in an interview with the Post. Jones said he and his friends were not arrested.
“It’s only a matter of time until someone is killed or critically injured in one of these Trump rallies”, speculated Shaun King, a well-known Black Lives Matter activist.
Swain did not say how police identified McGraw or whether he confessed to punching the protester.
The altercation also prompted an internal investigation by the local police, who during the rally had taken no action against the suspect and grabbed the victim instead.
“We are on top of this”, Swain said.
Two protesters were also arrested and charged with trespassing and resisting arrest unrelated to the incident involving McGraw.
But Carolyn Lukensmeyer, director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, a non-partisan advocacy group, said she can’t remember a recent time when animosity towards the protesters actually broke out into a physical fight.
The incident, captured from multiple angles, involved security leading the protester, a black man, out of Trump’s Fayetville, N.C. event when an apparently white man sporting a ponytail walks over and quickly punches the protester in the face as at least one member of security watched, recordings show.
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McGraw replied, “you bet I liked it”. Trump said some people in the audience “took him out”.
