Protesters Return to St. Louis Home Where Owners Drew Guns, Heckle Couple

Armed homeowners standing in front their house along Portland Place confront protesters marching to St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson's house Sunday, June 28, 2020, in the Central West End of St. Louis. The protesters called for Krewson's resignation for releasing the names and addresses of residents who suggested defunding the police department. Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP

Hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters returned to the home of the St. Louis couple who last week appeared with guns in a viral incident.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who confronted marchers with an AR-15-style rifle and a small handgun last week, were not seen in the Friday incident.

The Black Lives Matter protesters stopped at the gate near the McCloskeys’ home for around 15 minutes but did not go over, according to video footage. The protesters can be heard taunting and heckling the couple.

The Associated Press reported that inside their gate, “more than a dozen men in plain clothes walked the grounds and peered out from a second-floor balcony of the couple’s home,” adding that one protester appeared to try to jump over the gate but didn’t.

According to other reports, the couple stayed on the balcony of their palatial home and watched the protesters.

Last week, Mark McCloskey, a personal injury attorney, told Fox News that he feared for his life leading up to the viral incident.

“When I saw that mob coming through the gate with their rage and their anger, I thought that we would be overrun in a second,” he said.

“By the time I was out there with my rifle, the people were 20 or 30 feet from my front wall. I’ve got a low wall that separates my house from my front yard. And so, I was literally afraid that within seconds they would surmount the wall, and come into the house, kill us, burn the house down and everything that I had worked for and struggled for … for the last 32 years.”

A couple brandished guns as a group of activists moved into their gated neighborhood in St. Louis, Mo., on June 28, 2020. Daniel Shular via Reuters

McCloskey said he saw his life “going up in flames … I did what I thought I had to do to protect my hearth, my home, and my family.”

In the interview, the lawyer said he’s not racist.

“To call us racist is ridiculous,” he told the show. “It had nothing to do with race. I wasn’t worried what the race was of the mob that came through my gate. I was worried I was going to be killed. I didn’t care what race they were.”

The incident occurred as protesters were heading toward Democratic St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home to demand that she resign after she read the names and addresses of activists who submitted complaints to entirely defund the city’s police department. Krewson said she wouldn’t defund the department and later apologized for reading their names on Facebook Live.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner also announced this week she would investigate the couple.

But their lawyer, Albert Watkins, said that there were bad actors among the Black Lives Matter demonstrators.

He told news outlets: “Bad things were said. They weren’t the message of Black Lives Matter. They were threats. They were hostile…my clients weren’t there with guns. [Mark McCloskey] went in and got his guns … these two people have spent a career serving and addressing the civil rights needs of people of color. [They] were not frightened of peaceful protesters.”