An 82-year-old Air Force veteran in Massachusetts was attacked for supporting President Trump, according to police.
Charlie Chase said a man came up to him screaming, while Chase was holding a pro-Trump sign and wearing a Trump hat near his house in Fall River on Tuesday.
“Came running over to me, and he said, ‘Gimme the sign.’ He tried to take the sign from me, I didn’t want to give it to him, so I was holding onto it. So, he pulled it hard enough that he tore it in half,” said Chase. “The guy, when he came at me, I had never seen a horror story that the face was so filled with hate and anger as his was. I was just frozen.”
The man allegedly also picked Chase up during the altercation and then kicked him in the ribs when he was on the ground.
“According to the other fella that was with me, I didn’t know that [the suspect] had lifted me up, but he apparently lifted me up and flung me down on my back to the ground,” Chase said.
Police arrested Aidan Courtright, 27, for the assault and charged him with a civil rights violation with injury, assault and battery on a person over 60, vandalism of personal property, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. He was released Thursday after a hearing and was ordered to return to court in August.
Police say Chase was “violently targeted for his political views and violently assaulted.”
The situation unfolded as the country grapples with mass protests and riots following the death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, who died while in police custody in Minneapolis.
Floyd was seen in the final moments of his life, begging for air as former officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Chauvin and three other officers involved in the arrest have been fired. Chauvin is facing a second-degree murder charge, and the three other officers, Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao, have been charged with aiding and abetting murder.
