A man was arrested Saturday in Alpine at a “No Kings” anti-Trump administration protest after what Brewster County’s top law enforcement official described as a confrontation with a passing truck that had allegedly “rolled coal” on the crowd while displaying a “Trump Train” banner.
Craig Campbell of Austin was arrested on assault and criminal mischief charges after the incident just before 2 p.m. Saturday outside the Brewster County courthouse. He had been released on a $2,500 bond as of Monday morning.
In an interview Saturday, Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson said that a group of young men drove by the protest and blew exhaust smoke at the crowd from the truck. Campbell then struck the truck with a flagpole, breaking a window and injuring one of the vehicle's occupants, Dodson said.
“The flagpole kept going down the pickup, and where one of the young men in the back was, it hit him in the face and busted his nose,” he said.
Dodson said officers witnessed the scene and arrested Campbell without incident.
In an arrest affidavit, Deputy Dereck Campos wrote that video surveillance showed Campbell “lunged” toward the passing truck. The deputy said in the affidavit the injured man’s nose “appeared to be bruised and swollen with visible markings” and that a camper shell attached to the truck had “small dents.”
A video from the protest shared on social media appears to show the incident. In it, a group of men can be seen driving by the crowd in a vintage model truck with a large camper shell and a “Trump Train” banner affixed to the front of the camper. The men are seen waving an American flag out of the truck’s passenger side window and exhaust smoke billows from the truck as they drive by. Toward the end of a video, a person can be seen holding a flagpole into the street, and the pole appears to hit the truck.
Marfa Public Radio did not witness the incident, which happened as Saturday’s event had already begun to wind down.
The protest was otherwise calm and peaceful. A crowd of at least 150 protesters gathered on the courthouse lawn, waved signs and cheered when passing vehicles honked.
Several other trucks also “rolled coal” during the event but mostly did not seem to phase protesters. One protester even jumped into a plume of smoke from a passing truck, comically taking a bow as the smoke surrounded him.
“A bunch of people that were there gave us information on the rolling coal, because they said they’d come by two or three times,” Dodson said. “I wish they’d have called the law when it happened.”
Rolling coal is technically illegal in Texas, though enforcement is often sparse. State law specifically makes it a criminal misdemeanor, but only if a driver emits “visible smoke for 10 seconds or longer” or smoke that “remains suspended in the air for 10 seconds or longer before fully dissipating.”
Sheriff Dodson said his office is looking into whether the men in the “Trump Train” truck violated that law.
“We gotta count the seconds,” he said. “If it violates the statute, then we’ll take it.”
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