Police search home of pair seen in video with guns

ST. LOUIS — Authorities executed a search warrant at the St. Louis mansion of a white couple whose armed defense of their home during a recent racial injustice protest drew widespread attention, their attorney confirmed Saturday.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who are personal injury lawyers, were caught on video brandishing guns as demonstrators walked past their Renaissance palazzo-style home on June 28 while headed to protest outside the mayor’s home nearby. The video showed Mark McCloskey, 61, wielding a long-barreled gun and

Patricia McCloskey, 63, standing next to him waving a handgun.

Joel Schwartz, the couple’s lawyer, said that a search warrant was served Friday and that the gun Mark McCloskey was holding in the video was seized. Schwartz said arrangements have been made to turn over to authorities the gun that Patricia McCloskey had been holding, adding that her gun was inoperable at the time of the protest and still is.

The couple has not been charged, and Schwartz said charges against them would be “absolutely, positively unmerited.”

Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner, who is St. Louis’ top prosecutor, issued a statement after the June 28 incident in which she said she was “alarmed” by what happened and that “any attempt to chill (the right to peacefully protest) through intimidation or threat of deadly force will not be tolerated.”

Schwartz said that under Missouri law, people who are in reasonable apprehension or fear have the right to take necessary steps to defend themselves.

Meanwhile, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Saturday that public records and interviews show that the McCloskeys are almost always in conflict with others, typically over control of private property.