‘My clients didn’t sit on their front stoop with guns…’
St. Louis police officers on Friday seized the rifle that Mark McCloskey used on June 28 to keep “300 to 500” trespassers from harming his family and property, KSDK reported.
The McCloskey’s attorney, Albert Watkins, reportedly took possession of the handgun that Patricia McCloskey pointed at the trespassers who had threatened the family.
Police officers stole the McCloskey’s firearms without arresting them or charging them with crimes.
The police only obtained a search warrant to take the rifle.
The McCloskeys spoke July 6 on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, called “Hannity.”
“[They said] that they were going to kill us,” Patricia McCloskey said. “They were going to come in there. They were going to burn down the house.”
“They were going to be living in our house after I was dead, and they were pointing to different rooms and said, ‘That’s going to be my bedroom and that’s going to be the living room and I’m going to be taking a shower in that room,'” she said.
The McCloskeys said a group of agitators and trespassers returned to their neighborhood on July 3, but they had prepared themselves by hiring private security and hiding their valuable possessions.
The family said an agitator threatened to murder their dog.
The trespassers said they did not plan to harass the McCloskeys, but instead intended to protest in front of Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home.
Following the tense encounter, Kimberly Gardner, circuit attorney in St. Louis, said her office would investigate the McCloskeys for brandishing their firearms to keep the trespassers from harming them.
Watkins said the McCloskey’s did not display their firearms until after the trespassers began to intimidate them.
“My clients didn’t sit on their front stoop with guns,” Watkins said. “No firearms were on them at the time…It was not until they basically were in a position of seeing and observing violence, recklessness, lawbreaking, and knowing that the police were not going to be doing anything.”
