Man charged in reporter’s assault headed to prison
Wooster man’s trip to Mississippi violated terms of his probation
The Wooster man accused of assaulting a television reporter during a live broadcast is going to prison for three years for violating his probation.
Benjamin Eugene Dagley was sentenced to 36 months in prison by a Cuyahoga County judge at a Wednesday hearing, according to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office.
Dagley, a 54-year-old Wooster native, left Ohio for Gulfport, Mississippi, without permission while on probation, where he allegedly assaulted an MSNBC reporter on live television.
A manhunt ensued once he fled the scene until U.S. Marshals arrested him three days later at a shopping plaza in Dayton.
He faces two counts of assault, one count of disturbance of the peace and one count of violation of emergency curfew, according to the Gulfport Police Department.
Proceedings for the alleged attack will take place once he is extradited to Mississippi, according to the Cuyahoga County Sheriff ’s Office.
Bizarre assault was caught on national television
MSNBC Reporter Shaquille Brewster was covering Hurricane Ida on Monday, Aug. 31, as it slammed into the Gulf Coast.
When Dagley parked his white 2016 Ford F150 pickup and ran toward the reporter, Brewster was on live television.
Dagley yelled something inaudible about “accuracy,” according to a video that later went viral.
Brewster moved to get the Wooster man out of frame, and a few seconds later, he signed off.
“Craig, I’m going to toss it back to you because we have a man who is upset right now,” Brewster said as Dagley approached him yelling.
When the camera broke away to another news anchor, the man assaulted Brewster, according to Gulfport police. After the incident, Brewster tweeted that he and the MSNBC team were OK. “Appreciate the concern guys. The team and I are all good!” he wrote on Twitter.
Current and previous legal battles
Dagley has a long legal history that spans multiple counties and now two states. He and another Wooster resident are the defendants in a civil lawsuit against a former co-worker who claims that they committed fraud, according to court documents. This case is ongoing with a jury trial set for Oct. 18 in Wayne County Common Pleas Court. In 2017, he was arrested after he broke into Cleveland Plating, a company he once owned, according to a report from Cleveland.com.
There, Dagley drilled into tanks containing sodium cyanide, hydrochloric acid, yellow chromate, ferrous chloride, and sulfuric acid. The owner of the electroplating company said Dagley risked creating a deadly Wwi-like cyanide gas, according to the article. In another incident, he was accused of breaking into the Cleveland Plating building and of punching and slamming a door into a security guard, according to a Cleveland.com report. During this time, he was also in the midst of an ongoing dispute with the company regarding the property, its lease, mortgage and other issues.
He pleaded guilty to one count of attempted felonious assault, inducing panic and vandalism. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and five years probation, according to the court docket. This was the same five-year probation that he was sentenced to prison for violating when he left Ohio without permission.
Reach Bryce by email at bbuyakie@gannett.com
On Twitter: @Bryce_buyakie