I just I wish that this hadn’t happened last night, but I didn’t ask for it. I was having dinner.
TRANSCRIPT: Interview with St. Louis man who pulled out rifle during protests | ksdk.com
ST. LOUIS: Mark McCloskey said he and his wife Patricia appear in the now-viral photos of the protest in their Central West End neighborhood.
McCloskey gave an interview to 5 On Your Side anchor Anne Allred.
Below is the transcript of the interview Monday morning:
Anne Allred: Tell me what happened last night.
Mark McCloskey: We came back to the house. I don’t know what time it is, I’ve been up ever since. I’m a little, I’m a little blurry, but we were preparing dinner. We went out to the east patio, open porch that faces Kingshighway on one side and Portland Place Drive on the south, and we’re sitting down for dinner. We heard all this stuff going on down on Maryland Plaza. And then the mob started to move up Kingshighway, but it got parallel with the Kingshighway gate on Portland Place.
Somebody forced the gate, and I stood up and announced that this is private property. Go back. I can’t remember in detail anymore. I went inside, I got a rifle. And when they … because as soon as I said this is private property, those words enraged the crowd. Horde, absolute horde came through the now smashed down gates coming right at the house. My house, my east patio was 40 feet from Portland Place Drive. And these people were right up in my face, scared to death. And then, I stood out there. The only thing we said is this is private property. Go back. Private property. Leave now.
At that point, everybody got enraged. There were people wearing body armor. One person pulled out some loaded pistol magazine and clicked them together and said that you were next. We were threatened with our lives, threatened with a house being burned down, my office building being burned down, even our dog’s life being threatened. It was, it was about as bad as it can get. I mean, those you know, I really thought it was Storming the Bastille that we would be dead and the house would be burned and there was nothing we could do about it. It was a huge and frightening crowd. And they were they broken the gate were coming at us.
Allred: There have been some reports on Twitter and people who say they were there. It says they are saying the gate was already broken.
McCloskey: Yes. That is nonsense. Absolute nonsense. The gate was up, broken. The gate was broken physically in half. Our trustees on Portland Place came out later in the night and chained it all up with an automotive tow chain it looks like. But no, you can talk to the trustees on Portland Place. The gate was not broken in half and laying on the ground one second before they came in the storm.
Allred: Were the protesters on your private property at any point?
McCloskey: Everything inside the Portland Place gate is private property. There is nothing public in Portland Place. Being inside that gate is like being in my living room. There is no public anything in Portland Place. It is all private property. And you’ve got to appreciate that if there are two or three hundred people, I don’t know how many there were. We were told that 500 people showed up at the Lyda Krewson house, which is not on our street, as you know. But how many of them came through Portland Place? I don’t know. But it was a big crowd and they were aggressive, wearing body armor and screaming at us and threatening to harm us. And how they were going to be living in our house after they kill us.
Allred: And what has happened since last night, and those images exploded online?
McCloskey: Well, I’ve had to turn the phones off in my office, so I had to come over here last night and have the office boarded up because we’re getting threats against the building and everybody. It is interesting to me that the very people that are asking the mayor to resign for ‘doxxing’ people have now put all of my information all over the web, everywhere in the world. Is there some hypocrisy there? You know, maybe I’m maybe I’m missing something. But we’ve had to turn off our telephones here at the office because all my lines have been going continuously since I got here at 10:30 last night. I am getting thousands of emails. I going to have to turn off my website. And it’s all it’s been both threatening and encouraging because of the number of people who have voiced their support. But there’s also been an awful lot of people who have the very direct threats of violence against me and my family.
Allred: And you said you’ve received death threats?
McCloskey: Oh, God, yes. The death threats started within minutes. I mean, I don’t know how long this whole event started. But I’ll bet we got our first e-maildeath threats before the mob moved on from Portland Place.
Allred: When you see the images online of you and your wife on the patio, armed now after the fact. What do you think?
McCloskey: Well, you know, we were always obviously upset. My wife doesn’t know anything about guns, but she knows about being scared. And she grabbed a pistol and I had a rifle, and I was very, very careful I didn’t point the rifle at anybody. The only thing that stopped the crowd from approaching the house was when I had that rifle and I was holding there. The only thing that stemmed the tide. I can’t blame my wife for being terrified and for doing what she could to protect what she thought was her life, it was it was, you know, a horrible, horrible event.
And to call these people protesters either. I’ve lived in the City of St. Louis for 32 years. We were, you know, urban pioneers back when we bought on Portland Place in 1988. And we have done everything for 32 years to improve the neighborhood and to keep this historic neighborhood going. And it’s very frustrating to see it get targeted. And of course, we’d been told by the press and by Expect US, that they wanted to start targeting middle-class neighborhoods and upper-class neighborhoods and bring their revolution outside of the cities. And we got an email from our trustees on Thursday saying that they were going to do this on Friday. We’re very worried about it.
I drove to the office today. There’s spray painted on one of the boarded up buildings on Maryland Plaza, slogans saying on the board up that when we come to F stuff up. This isn’t going to stop us, is it’s a it’s a it’s a revolution going on.
Allred: Any regrets about what happened?
McCloskey: I regret they broke in the gate. I can tell you that. I mean, what l’ll say this. There is there’s mayhem in the city every night. You never hear about it. There’ll be dozens of shootings, multiple deaths. No one seems to care about those black. lives. But but, you know, it’s when it’s when there are political, political capital to be made from somebody’s death. That death matters no other life matters that I can see, you know.
I do civil rights cases. Right now, I’m representing a young man who was assaulted by the police who is sitting in prison right now for being involved in a car accident after which the police came in and assaulted him. It’s on video. I’m not some kind of extreme, you know, anti- Black Lives Matter guy. I do these cases. I have been doing them for decades. I mean, I have on the wall of my conference room, I’ve got an anti-slavery broadsheet, the abolitionist broadsheet from 1832. It’s been there as long as I’ve owned this building. I mean, I’m not I’m not the enemy of people that really care about the Black lives, but I’m apparently the enemy of the terrorists and the Marxists that are running this organization.
Allred: On that note, what is your message to people today? What is your message to people who said they were on Portland Place peacefully protesting and that you incited? Do you have any message for the people who are saying they were peacefully protesting on your street?
McCloskey: Sure. First of all, why are they protesting on Portland Place. The mayor doesn’t live there? And when they kick in the gate, when the first thing they do is destroy private property and they storm in angry and shouting and threatening. This isn’t a protest. It’s a revolution. It’s just an attempt to inflict terror. It’s the definition of terrorism is to use force and violence, terrorize a population. And that’s what happened to me last night.
Allred: What will your family do now with threats against your life, your home, your business?
McCloskey: Well, I’m hoping that the government goes to protect us. Although I have my doubts about that. We will struggle through the best way we can. It is it is discouraging.
Allred: Anything else you’d like to add, Mark?
McCloskey: I don’t think so. I just I wish that this hadn’t happened last night, but I didn’t ask for it. I was having dinner.
Comments on this entry are closed.
Wonder if his eyes, from which the scales fell so recently, will stay that way long? One can hope. I have been doing rather a lot of hoping lately, but also plenty of loading…
One can hope, Cap’n. But toward the end he was trying to amend of sorts, so, who knows what he’s thinking? He better get used to running a serious security routine all the time as they now have his number.
Security measures are good for every one of us. Here of late I have been out of my sleepy little AOR and up in the belly of the beast, and it has been illuminating. Durham/Chapel Hill is as woke an area per capita as one is likely to encounter for many hundreds of miles, with scads of sets and cells vying to politically out-loony the others. Stalinists, Maoists, the whole mentally ill spectrum…Not to mention the rather higher level of street crime.
Not far from the Dook campus, I came as close to having to ventilate two miscreants as I have had to in many a year while out for my daily constitutional. Spotted a coupla yoots well before before they clocked me; hell, one was clad in a black sweatshirt on a 90+ degree day. Utilized some anti-terrorism training from long ago to establish that, yep, I was indeed being followed. My full frame pistol rides in a quick access over the shoulder bag, which looks exactly like what it is, and which should be the sort of fairly obvious marker one gleans at a distance if one is a street criminal, but they were fearless, abysmally stupid, or possibly both, and felt froggy enough to make a run at me from across a well traveled street. My subsequent response sufficed to alter their behavior and send them elsewhere, most rikki tikki. I am glad this evening to not be on the lobotomy box as the latest merciless slaughterer of po’ unarmed chilluns gettin’ they lifes together while layin’ down righteous world altering tracks and considering they higher education plans. Another step or two and I very well might have been the latest poster boy for D.I.E. YT.
It’s too bad that Tom Wolfe (Richmond, not Asheville) ain’t here to chronicle this madness.
In all things, learn what you can. What did you learn from this event?
The 5 On Your Side anchor asks the usual “how do you feel” questions, but nothing of substance, of course.
So glad you decided to make this a thread. It certainly deserves it. This dude was brave and his wife even more so (she really needs some firearms training. After this I’d bet the farm she’s gonna get some…).
O/T Anyone know what happens to the Diplomad? His site returns an error message and has for the past 1-2 months now.
Sundance is ON this issue with an important point:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/06/29/soros-funded-st-louis-circuit-attorney-threatens-legal-action-against-property-owners-who-defended-themselves-against-rampaging-mob/
https://thediplomad.blogspot.com/
Works for me.
This input is from Pete at WRSA today along with this link:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/gun-toting-st-louis-lawyers-defend-mansion-blm-protesters-viral-video
The scenario is probably going to get replayed many dozens if not hundreds of times this summer, in all manner of neighborhoods.
There are enough attorneys and tactical trainers that read your blog who may want to anonymously put together a DO/DONT DO list for those who are facing a sketchy mob on their own property, like these 2 were. The 2 attorneys have the benefit of high social clout, resources and familiarity with the relevant legal issues. They did not in any way show much tactical innovation or flexibility, however.
For my own input to kick that off, I consider that the woman only had a chromed pistol (can anyone identify the pistol type?). If there is any chance of an encounter with a mob, a pistol just is not going to do. All defenders need to be familiar with, have access to and be willing to bear what is the gold standard of such things… an AR platform.
People will argue the point, but V.I. Lenin knew that quantity has a quality all its own… and ownership with competent carriage may actually SAVE protester lives – if they see a guy or gal confidently holding an AR at the low ready (or whatever), they must instinctively start thinking of their life choices and consequences. They may be stupid, but the language of the AR is something difficult to misunderstand.
The 2 defenders did not appear to have a tactical plan. Had one or both maneuvered to start to flank the mob, perhaps had a few smoke grenades (yes, you can buy some right now online) thrown into the mix… maybe even had security camera footage to use to support their story, the effect upon normie America would be electrifying. If they can invade a tony private neighborhood full of the landed gentry, the normie implicitly understands that the same type of mob can bum rush him in his suburban disaster built by wood butchers.
Consider if you will… the mob had masks, the defenders, none. The look in the woman’s eyes (pistol bearer) is one of abject terror. Masks help keep that under control. Frankly, my balaclava is going everywhere with me from today forward. Deprive them of the propaganda moment, make it harder to doxx and get canceled.
What passive measures might have helped? DOGS. A few possessive K9 of reasonably large size would have been a force multiplier. Think of some plate carriers. In such circumstances, no matter if the mob is getting rambunctious in a gated community, a tract home subdivision or a city block… citizens are going to have to consider the necessity for their own survival when they see a neighbor get mobbed, they need to consider getting geared up and standing WITH their neighbor. Because… they came for the guy next door today, when is YOUR number going to be “up”?
Consider the sharply changing trajectory of these riot mob groups if every time they went after someone in a residence, they had to face not only the home owner, but his/her neighbors as well? What if they realized that they now had such on at least one flank, and reinforcements were probably going to start pinching off their avenue for withdrawl? Once they sense that and panic, that will be some security footage to see as they bolt for the gaps.
In such circumstance, I would hope that the residents keep their heads and let them flee unmolested. There is a lesson to even the most obtuse when they realize that the only thing between them and a chalk outline is the good order, discipline and decency of the Average American. It will be a glorious day when some unnamed suburbanite “fixes bayonets” in a possible dystopian future and performs in a way suitable to his forebears
Thanx, Pandora!
ghost,
Further confirmation that dieversity + proximity = war?
That, and the absolute correctness of my decision to flee RDU nearly a half century back, not turning back to look lest I be turned into a pillar of salt.
Next time someone asks why you need AR-15’s, show them this story.
Melinda sed: “Next time someone asks why you need AR-15’s…”
=========
Just this morning my son sent me 20 more Magpul 30 rounders.
Fuk. Now I have to build another AR to handle the excess.
Dogs. For some serious protection, trained guardian dogs are hard to beat. My wife and I have had Doberman’s for 35 plus years. Always at least one usually two, sometimes three.
My wife raised Central Asian Ovcharka’s for years also, at our place in the outback of Nevada. That breed is arguably the most fierce canine on the planet. The Russians should know.
Big aggressive looking dogs seem to scare the poop out of some serious otherwise, two legged bears.
And behind it all, the tribe. Who yearn for the “good old days” of their Messiahs. But nobody dares talk about them. They will not tolerate the truth!!!
I stopped a burglary cold earlier in the month in my home using my AR15 and Walther PPKS and so naturally this story piqued my interest. The local authorities sorta panned any story, must not want the plebes getting any ideas about taking the Law into our own hands and effectively fighting crime on our own terms, rather than playing victim and letting them milk that ongoing criminal investigation. So my guess is it’s a Walther the Lady is waving about. I aimed directly at the perps. Be warned, this has changed me. It’s a good thing to not be a victim.
I’m with you Generik.