St. Louis police on Friday executed a search warrant at the home of a local lawyer and seized a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle that he pointed at Black Lives Matter protesters last month, according to media reports.
Mark McCloskey, and his wife, Patricia McCloskey, who work together as personal injury attorneys, were captured on video brandishing guns as demonstrators walked past their palatial home on June 28. While critics called for their arrest, the two were embraced as heroes by gun lovers after the video went viral.
“We complied with the search warrant. They took my AR,” Mark McCloskey told the conservative Todd Starnes radio show. “I’m absolutely surprised by this.”
The couple told police Friday that the pistol Patricia McCloskey brandished was with their lawyer, sources told NBC affiliate KSDK-TV.
The couple’s attorney, Joel Schwartz, confirmed to the TV station that a warrant was issued for a search of their home Friday night. Schwartz said he has no idea where the handgun is. He hopes to meet with a prosecutor next week.
No charges had been filed against the couple as of Friday night.
Mark McCloskey claimed he and his wife grabbed their guns during the protest because they were afraid for their lives from the “angry mob who came through my gate.” His wife insisted in a Fox News interview that she heard protesters talk about how they wanted to take over their home, kill her and her husband, and their dog.
But video of the protest that went viral shows protesters slowly sauntering past the couple on the sidewalk and not confronting them.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Friday that the McCloskeys have a reputation as obnoxious neighbours who have “nearly constantly sued other people and ordered people off their property.”
They have sued neighbours for making changes to their gravel road, sued a former employer for wrongful termination, sued others for defamation, and asserted “squatters’ rights” on common neighbourhood property, according to the newspaper. This was apparently part of the land they claimed to be guarding with their firearms. McCloskey said in an affidavit last year that he had once challenged a neighbour cutting through that property “at gunpoint.”