#Man who brandished gun at protesters says he was victim of ‘terrorism’

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Mark McCloskey holds a rifle as protesters walk past his house in St. Louis.
Bill Greenblatt/UPI

The St. Louis man who went viral, along with his wife, for brandishing guns on Black Lives Matter protesters in their tony neighborhood claims he was the victim of “social intimidation” and “terrorism.”

In a Tuesday night interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, Mark McCloskey, 63, reiterated statements that he and his wife Patricia, 61, feared for their lives when they wielded their firearms outside their mansion Sunday night at protestors heading toward Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home to demand her resignation.

Cuomo questioned McCloskey about whether anything happened to his family or property.

“Yeah, it’s called social intimidation, it’s called terrorism,” he said. “Chris, what’s the definition of terrorism? To use violence and intimidation to frighten the public. That’s what was happening that night. That’s what happened to me, and that’s the damage I suffered.”

He shot down any suggestion that his actions made him the face of opposition to the Black Lives Matter Movement.

“That is a completely ridiculous statement,” McCloskey said. “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.”

“I didn’t take the time to see their birth certificates or anything else,” he added. “I was defending my house, my life, my wife and what I’ve spent 32 years building there.”

Their attorney, Albert Watkins, has said that the McCloskeys are longtime civil rights activists.

The pair, both personal injury lawyers, grabbed a semi-automatic rifle and a silver pistol when two or three protesters — who were white — violently threatened them and their property, Watkins has said.

They “acted lawfully” out of “fear and apprehension, the genesis of which was not race-related,” he claimed earlier this week.

“My clients are completely behind and endorsed the message of BLM,” Watkins told CNN. “What they are not capable of doing is embracing the abject utilization of that noble message that we all need to hear over and over and over again as a license to rape, rob, pillage bowl over all of our rights.”