14-Year-Old Girl Charged for Punching Man in Trump Costume While Friends Film Attack
A 14-year-old Florida girl now faces criminal charges for physically attacking an adult male dressed as President Donald Trump at a public fairground over the weekend.
According to The Associated Press, the unnamed teen, while being video recorded by a friend, allegedly walked up and struck the man as he waited in line with his family for the annual Naples Haunted Gross House at the Collier County Fairgrounds in Naples, Florida, on Saturday.
The alleged attacker and her four friends then ran off to find their own place in line, laughing as the victim reportedly followed behind, asking why she had assaulted him before reporting the incident to fairground employees.
The girl was promptly removed from the grounds and fairground employees immediately turned the information over to local authorities who, upon further investigation, brought misdemeanor battery charges against her.
A 14-year-old girl faces a misdemeanor charge after allegedly punching a man dressed as United States President Donald Trump last Saturday, Oct. 26. | @RArcadioINQ https://t.co/QIU5LmLnDN
— Inquirer (@inquirerdotnet) October 29, 2019
Video of the incident was reportedly also found on one of the teens’ Instagram accounts, a Collier County School system employee told the Naples Daily News.
The video has since been removed from public viewing on the web.
A Collier County Sheriff’s deputy told the outlet, however, that the video and follow-up interviews with the attacker and her parents lead authorities to believe “the sole motivation was to strike ‘Trump.'”
Saturday’s incident comes as yet another example in a slew of recent public attacks on individuals wearing identifiers that show support for the president.
Earlier this month, California police arrested 32-year-old David Delgado in his Los Angeles home after surveillance footage revealed him to be the suspect in the brutal bathroom assault and robbery of a man wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.
In July, video of 30-year-old Kino Jimenez went viral on Twitter showing him cursing out, dumping a drink on and stealing from an underage boy at a San Antonio, Texas, Whataburger, KENS reported.
Man Arrested After Attacking Texas Teen Wearing ‘MAGA’ Hat
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Authorities in Texas say a suspect is in custody after viral video footage depicted an apparently unprovoked attack at a San Antonio fast-food restaurant. Kino Jiminez, 30, was arrested in Universal City… pic.twitter.com/GJsoLauUhL— FullMagazine❌ (@FullMagazineUS) July 7, 2018
Another notable assault on a red hat-wearing individual happened in April, when two men jumped a civilian in Maryland while he was walking the streets with his wife, according to USA Today.
Establishment media sources have, by-and-large avoided covering such attacks at length, leaving them to local affiliates while focusing on a supposed rise in hate crimes under the Trump administration.
Republican political strategists and policymakers have, however, made it a point to bring attention to this rise in left-wing, anti-Trump violence, The Washington Post reported — using similar events to frame the Democratic Party’s leftward shift under the Trump administration as something of a lawless, violent tantrum.
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