Police search St. Louis mansion of couple who pointed guns at protesters

(Reuters) - Police in St. Louis, Missouri, searched the mansion of a couple who brandished guns at protesters marching outside their home last month in widely seen videos, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said.

FILE PHOTO: Patricia McCloskey and her husband Mark McCloskey draw their firearms on protestors, including a man who holds a video camera and microphone, as they enter their neighborhood during a protest against St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson, in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. June 28, 2020. REUTERS/Lawrence Bryant/File Photo

The police arrived on Friday evening with a search warrant and seized a semi-automatic .223 caliber rifle, police said, apparently the same weapon wielded by Mark McCloskey during the June 28 incident.

McCloskey, 63, and his wife, Patricia McCloskey, 61, are both personal injury lawyers, and have said they were frightened for their lives when demonstrators protesting against police violence marched by their mansion on their way to the home of St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson.

The protests were part of a nationwide wave of marches and demonstrations over police violence against Black people prompted by the killing in May of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer who knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Videos show the McCloskeys, who are white, shouting at Black and white protesters, who are apparently unarmed, to keep off their property over several minutes. Some in the crowd record the scene on their cellphones, or shout out that the protesters have no interest in causing the couple harm. Patricia McCloskey pointed a handgun at the crowd.

The McCloskeys and a lawyer representing them did not respond to requests for comment.

Soon after the incident, Kimberly Gardner, the city’s chief prosecutor, said she was alarmed by the videos and that her office was investigating a possible infringement of people’s right to peacefully protest, saying in a statement that “intimidation or threat of deadly force will not be tolerated.”

The couple have said they were within their rights to defend their property.

The McCloskeys have repeatedly filed lawsuits or threatened to do so in order to defend their property rights, according to an investigation published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Saturday.

In 2013, Mark McCloskey destroyed bee hives just outside his mansion’s wall that were placed there by a neighboring synagogue in order to provide honey for Rosh Hashanah celebrations, the newspaper reported. McCloskey left a note saying he would sue the congregation if they did not remove all trace of the hives, it said.

plooptyploots on July 11st, 2020 at 20:37 UTC »

I missed the point..did they find anything? Why the search?

kimya_d on July 11st, 2020 at 16:34 UTC »

FYI, the ground they were “defending” is set aside as a common area in the neighborhood’s indenture, but this couple sued claiming that they now own it due to “squatters rights” because they have “openly and hostilely” (their words) occupied it for a requisite amount of time. Story here.

These are the type of people who will sue you for violating their rights if you look at them funny, but of course don’t think anyone else has any rights at all.

itsajaguar on July 11st, 2020 at 15:39 UTC »

These people love conflict and having people to fight against. They're constantly suing people or manufacturing disputes to give them reasons to sue people. They're rich assholes who have gotten away with whatever they want due to their money. Hopefully this becomes the first time they're held accountable.

Here's some excerpts from the article I linked

In an ongoing suit against Portland Place trustees in 2017, the McCloskeys say they are entitled to a 1,143-square-foot triangle of lawn in front of property that is set aside as common ground in the neighborhood’s indenture.

It was that patch of green protesters saw when they filed through the gate. Mark McCloskey said in an affidavit that he has defended the patch before by pointing a gun at a neighbor who had tried to cut through it.

In 2013, he destroyed bee hives placed just outside of the mansion’s northern wall by the neighboring Jewish Central Reform Congregation and left a note saying he did it, and if the mess wasn’t cleaned up quickly he would seek a restraining order and attorneys fees. The congregation had planned to harvest the honey and pick apples from trees on its property for Rosh Hashanah.

“The children were crying in school,” Rabbi Susan Talve said. “It was part of our curriculum.”

They filed a lawsuit in St. Louis circuit court to try to force the trustees to enforce the neighborhood rules as written. The McCloskeys dismissed the claim, but the judge would not let them refile an amended version because it “failed to allege a justiciable controversy.”

The McCloskeys appealed all the way to the state Supreme Court to try to make the judge allow them to refile their case, but the effort failed.

One of the rules prohibited unmarried people from living together. Several neighbors said it was because the McCloskeys didn’t want gay couples living on the block.

Mark McCloskey sued a former employer for wrongful termination and his sister, father and his father’s caretaker for defamation