Edward O’Keefe, owner of Peabody Heights Brewery in Baltimore’s Abell neighborhood, says a man maced two people outside the brewery as they were leaving “Butch Garden,” a queer community event held from 4 to 9 p.m. on Saturday, August 2, reports NBC affiliate WBAL.
According to charging documents, police received a call around 9:30 p.m. reporting that someone with a plastic baton was trying to attack him.
At Abell Avenue and 32nd Street, a few blocks from the brewery, a police officer saw a man in dark clothing running east. The man was later identified as 34-year-old Matthew Middleton. When the officer approached and asked what was happening, Middleton allegedly said he had been chased.
After detaining Middleton, police questioned people at the brewery who said he had pepper-sprayed them. The alleged victims also claimed he had a gun in the backpack he was wearing.
Middleton told officers he was carrying a pocket knife, pepper spray, and “a launcher like a BB gun.”
When asked about the BB gun, Middleton told officers he wanted to exercise his First Amendment right by protesting the event, but brought the weapon because he had been threatened by people in the past.
“Why should they be able to threaten me into silence?” Middleton told police.
The victims said they saw Middleton standing on a sidewalk outside the “Butch Garden” event holding a sign that read, “Trump Vance Make America Great Again.” Middleton claimed he was heckled by some people who grabbed his backpack. One victim told police she saw a couple of people “antagonizing him, but not really,” according to charging documents.
After one victim was pepper-sprayed, she and her friend began running, at which point Middleton allegedly pointed a black handgun at others outside the brewery.
Police arrested Middleton and charged him with assault.
O’Keefe said he tried to help one of the victims and is working with the “Butch Garden” organizer to reinforce security for future events.
“The police came, they talked to us, and then the police talked to that individual as well, and then we just helped them get their eyes washed out and gave them a beer. And try to be as helpful as possible,” he said.
One of the responding officers recognized Middleton from a similar altercation in July on Greenmount Avenue. In that incident, reported by The Baltimore Sun, Middleton — carrying a pro-Trump sign — got into a fight with a man who told him to put it down, then allegedly maced him.
“People keep attacking me in this town,” Middleton reportedly told the officer when asked why he’s involved in these types of incidents.
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On July 21, Wilmer Chavarria, superintendent of Vermont's Winooski School District, was detained for hours by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport after returning from a family visit to Nicaragua with his husband, Essex High School teacher Cyrus Dudgeon.
Officers seized Chavarria's phone and computer, separated him from Dudgeon, and interrogated him for at least five hours about his marriage and his job, according to Vermont's alternative weekly Seven Days.
During the interrogation, agents questioned whether Chavarria and Dudgeon were really married and repeatedly asked if Chavarria was actually a school superintendent. In an email to school board members, Chavarria described the experience as "abusive interrogation" and said he was "treated in a manner that is deeply disturbing and unacceptable."
A rainbow crosswalk mural in Delray Beach, Florida -- dedicated to the LGBTQ victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting -- was vandalized for the third time on June 17, when a man in a black pickup truck was caught on camera intentionally leaving tire marks across the paint.
Surveillance footage released by Delray Beach Police shows the driver waiting for another car to pass before spinning his wheels and speeding off, leaving black burn marks on the mural and surrounding rainbow crosswalks.
The video, released by Delray Beach Police, also shows the same truck returning to the intersection later and performing another burnout, continuing across the full length of the intersection.
After removing all references to transgender people from the Stonewall National Monument website earlier this year, the National Park Service has now scrubbed mentions of bisexual people as well.
As first reported by transgender journalist Erin Reed on her Erin in the Morning Substack, the change occurred on July 10, when the homepage was updated to read, "Before the 1960s, almost everything about living authentically as a gay or lesbian person was illegal."
Subsequent pages, including the site's "History and Culture" section, were also altered to remove broader LGBTQ references. One now reads: "Stonewall was a milestone for gay and lesbian civil rights," whereas it previously noted that living "openly as a member of the Stonewall comunity was a violation of law."
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