Los Angeles County district attorney’s husband faces charges after pointing a gun at protesters
The husband of Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey faces charges for pulling a gun on Black Lives Matter protesters outside the couple’s house in March.
David Lacey faces three misdemeanor counts of assault with a firearm — one each against Melina Abdullah, Justin Marks, and Dahlia Ferlito, according to the complaint filed Monday by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
Abdullah and Marks are activists with Black Lives Matter-LA and Ferlito is with White People 4 Black Lives, a BLM ally.
In March, protesters showed up at the Lacey home before dawn, demanding a conversation about officer-involved shootings and accountability in the Black community.
In a video recorded by a Black Lives Matter member, David Lacey can be seen waving a gun and telling the protesters to leave, saying “I will shoot you, get off my porch.”
Later, District Attorney Jackie Lacey made an emotional apology and said her husband meant no harm. The prosecutor told CNN last month that she felt the protest “crossed the line” and that it was “creating a situation where someone thinks that they’re about to be harmed. I don’t think that helps your cause at all.”
An attorney for David Lacey said he is “disappointed” at the charges.
“We disagree entirely with their assessment, but we have the utmost faith in the justice system, and we are confident that the correct result will be reached,” Lacey’s attorney Samuel Tyre said in a statement to CNN on Tuesday. “At this time we are not going to comment on the facts of the case, except to say that my client’s human instinct is forever and always to protect his wife and his family and to keep them safe from physical harm. We look forward to all relevant facts coming to light.”
In a statement sent to CNN by Tyre on Tuesday, Jackie Lacey said “the events that took place earlier this year have caused my family immense pain.” She said her family had been harassed and had received a death threat less than a week before the March incident.
“Protesters arrived at my house shortly after 5 am while I was upstairs,” she said in the statement. “My husband felt that we were in danger and acted out of genuine concern for our well-being.”
Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter-LA, called the charges a “pleasant surprise.”
“You know, we don’t have a lot of faith in the criminal justice system so we were assuming that he probably wouldn’t face charges,” Abdullah said. “And so it’s encouraging that he is facing some charges. But then when you step back from it, you also realize that if anyone else had pulled a gun and pointed it at three people, including me, pointed directly at my chest and said the words, ‘I will shoot you’ then they probably would be facing felony counts, not misdemeanors.”
