A white husband and wife team in an affluent area of St. Louis, Missouri, decided that the protesters walking down their street were just too many non-rich white folks for the couple to handle. According to reports, the couple, identified as attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey, felt so threatened by protesters walking through their gated community that they went out front carrying a hand gun and an assault rifle and threatened protesters from the front steps of their mansion. According to various reports, there were somewhere between 300 and 500 people protesting in the Central West End neighborhood.
The citizens were marching towards St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home in protest of Krewson’s bizarre video briefing on Friday, where she effectively doxxed citizens who had called for defunding the police department. Krewson, who has been against any cut backs in the city’s law enforcement budget (and incarceration budget), decided to try and intimidate protesters she had met with earlier. According to KMOV4: “Krewson grabbed submitted letters and read them, including the names and both partial and full addresses of those calling to defund the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.” Krewson has since apologized and the video of her live event has been taken down, but the damage has been done, setting off protests all weekend and calls for her resignation. When the McCloskeys decided to stand their ground, marchers were chanting things like: “Resign Lyda, take the cops with you.”
Patricia McCloskey told news outlet KMOV4 that the couple was having dinner outside when a "mob of at least 100 smashed through the historic wrought iron gates of Portland Place, destroying them, rushed towards my home where my family was having dinner outside and put us in fear of our lives.” Video that was shot of protesters walking through the opened gate seem to be contradictory to subsequent photos of the gate being broken.
This, of course, begs the following questions: a) whether or not protesters were the ones to break this gate, and b) was the gate broken after a couple escalated a peaceful protest by brandishing and threatening people with weapons? It’s hard to say, and it’s sad that the gate is broken. But we are all adults and gates being broken are low on the list of things to be sad about.
According to St. Louis reporter Alexis Zotos, the McCloskeys’ mansion is the first residence on Portland Place, a “private street.” A history of “private streets” and their long class and civic history in the city can be read here.
According to St. Louis Magazine, the McCloskeys have owned the palatial mansion for at least 30 years and have sunk a lot of money into restoring it back to its somewhat aristocratic origins, which you can read about here.
Here’s video of the couple “in fear for their lives.”