Man who aimed gun at St. Louis protesters says he feared they’d kill his wife and pets

A man in St. Louis who was captured on video with his wife pointing guns at protesters is speaking out after the incident.

On Sunday, roughly 300 protesters marched to Mayor Lydia Krewson’s home, demanding her resignation after she read the names of people who protested for police reform on a Facebook Live stream on Friday.

As they passed on Portland Place, a private street near Krewson’s home, Mark and Patricia McCloskey were caught on video standing outside their home pointing guns at protesters.

Mark McCloskey, seen in the video holding an assault-style rifle, has done several interviews since the video spread across social media on Sunday evening and said they were “in fear for our lives,” KMOV reported.

“It was like the storming of the Bastille, the gate came down and a large crowd of angry, aggressive people poured through,” Mark McCloskey told KMOV earlier this week. “I was terrified that we’d be murdered within seconds. Our house would be burned down, our pets would be killed.”

He told KSDK that he heard commotion nearby and that a gate to the neighborhood had been smashed down as a “horde” of protesters entered, according to the outlet. McCloskey said he initially told protesters that they were on private property and to leave before grabbing a rifle and heading back outside.

“They’re angry, they’re screaming, they’ve got spittle coming out of their mouth, and they’re coming toward the house,” he told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. “When I saw that mob come through the gate with their rage and their anger, I thought that we would be overrun in a second. By the time I was out there with my rifle, the people were 20 or 30 feet from my front wall.”

Video circulating on social media shows protesters walking through the gate, which was unbroken at the time, KMOV reported. It’s not clear when the gate was damaged.

Protesters said there was no reason for the couple to come out of their home with guns.

“To be very clear, the gate was open. When we came off Kings Highway, the gate was open,” the Rev. Darryl Gray told KSDK. “As soon as protesters came through the open gate, the man and woman came out of their home. He came out first and was on the balcony.”

After protesters realized the couple were armed, Gray said he used a megaphone to tell protesters to stay off the property and on the sidewalk, noting that people complied, according to KSDK.

He told the outlet that he did not see any protesters with weapons or any protesters step on the McCloskey’s property.

On Tuesday, McCloskey spoke to CNN’s Chris Cuomo. When asked how he felt about becoming “the face of political resistance to the Black Lives Matter movement,” McCloskey said it wasn’t political at all.

“I’m not the face of anything opposing to Black Lives Matters movement,” he told CNN. “I was a person scared for my life who was protecting my wife, my home, my hearth, my livelihood. I was a victim of a mob that came through the gate. I didn’t care what color they were. I didn’t care what their motivation was. I was frightened. I was assaulted and I was in imminent fear that they would run me over, kill me, burn my house.”

He went on to call the incident “social intimidation” and “terrorism,” adding that the only reason protesters did not get up his steps was because he and his wife had weapons. He also said that Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home could not be reached directly from his street and that in his opinion, the group was “going through a private neighborhood with the intention of going through a private neighborhood.”

McCloskey previously told KSDK that some protesters had been armed. “One person pulled out some loaded pistol magazine and clicked them together and said that you were next,” McCloskey said during the interview.

Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner, a St. Louis prosecutor, said she is working with police to launch an investigation into the incident, according to USA Today.

This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 8:52 AM.