ST. LOUIS (AP) — A judge has expunged the misdemeanor convictions of a St. Louis couple who brandished guns at racial injustice protesters outside their mansion in 2020. Now they want their guns back.
Attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey filed a request in January to have the convictions overturned. Judge Joseph P. Whyte wrote in an order Wednesday that the purpose of an expungement is to give people who have rehabilitated themselves a second chance, the Post-dispatch from St. reported. City prosecutors and police opposed the purges.
Immediately after the judge’s decision, Mark McCloskey demanded that the city return the two weapons seized as part of its 2021 guilty for misdemeanor assault. Republican Governor Mike Parson forgiven a few weeks after the appeal.
“It’s time for the city to hand over my guns,” he told the Post-Dispatch.
Otherwise, he said, he will take legal action.
The McCloskeys said they felt threatened by the protesters, who were passing by your house in June 2020, on the way to a demonstration in front of the mayor’s house nearby. It was one of hundreds of demonstrations across the country following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The couple also said the group was trespassing on a private street.
Mark McCloskey came out of his home with an AR-15-style rifle and Patricia McCloskey brandished a semiautomatic pistol.
