Charges are unlikely to be brought against a St. Louis couple who made national headlines when they stood outside their home June 28 holding weapons while protesters walked past the house, according to legal experts.
That's likely due to protesters walking onto private property in a state that has some of the strongest laws relating to gun rights and to the castle doctrine which allows homeowners to protect their property.
Protestors returned to the house a week after the sensational episode, though they did not walk down the private Portland Place where personal injury lawyers Mark and Patricia McCloskey live in their $1.6 million home once owned by members of the Busch family.
Speaking Tuesday, the couple expanded on their reasons for holding the AR-15 rifle an handgun as the Black Lives Matter protesters marched by.
Mark McCloskey, 61, told Fox News: 'It was shocking. The gate came in. Seemingly everybody in the world came forward. I think the estimate is 300-500 people."
"They came right towards us. We were preparing to have dinner on the porch and we were literally 70 feet from the gate," said McCloskey, the son of the late Dr. Bruce McCloskey, a prominent ear, nose, and throat specialist who served two terms on the City Council, "initially driven to do so by his opposition to a local ordinance banning the stabling of horses," according to his obituary.
'By the time we got our guns, by the time I got my gun, the crowd was probably 30 or 40 feet from us. We thought it was the end. People were screaming everything.'
Patricia McCloskey. 63. added that some of the protestors were shouting that "they were going to kill us, they were going to come in there, they were going to burn down the house, they were going to be living in our house after I was dead."
During the second protest on July 3, a number of men could be seen on the balcony of the house, which the couple bought for $500,000 in the late 1980s. Mark McCloskey said he had arranged for private security after hearing that there were plans to "burn the house."
St. Louis City prosecutor Kim Gardner said in a statement that she was alarmed at events in which “peaceful protesters were met by guns.”
“We must protect the right to peacefully protest, and any attempt to chill it through intimidation or threat of deadly force will not be tolerated,” Gardner said.
“Make no mistake: We will not tolerate the use of force against those exercising their First Amendment rights and will use the full power of Missouri law to hold people accountable.”
However, under the Castle Doctrine, an owner can defend his or her home with force, and the protestors were on private property. This doctrine was strenghthened in Missouri as recently as 2017 when the legislature extended its gun laws to get rid of any need to retreat before using force.
Anders Walker, a professor at the St. Louis University School of Law, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the castle doctrine in the state allows the couple to defend their property on a private street.
“At any point that you enter the property, they can then, in Missouri, use deadly force to get you off the lawn,” Walker told the newspaper.