"This is a safe location to vote," a Florida police chief assured voters following the arrest of what he says was a machete-wielding 18-year-old outside a Neptune Beach polling location. Neptune Beach Police Chief Michael J. Key said Caleb James Williams "brandished a machete in an aggressive, threatening posture over his head" at two women, ages 71 and 54, at the Beaches Branch Library on Tuesday.
Per Key, Williams was in a pack of eight males, the others all 16 and 17, who had allegedly decided to drive to the polling site "to protest and antagonize the opposing political side." Williams faces charges of aggravated assault on a person 65 years of age or older and improper exhibition of a firearm or dangerous weapon; no one else in his group was charged. The AP reports those convicted of aggravated assault on a senior in Florida face sentences of three to 15 years.
Key didn't mince words in a press conference: "I don't know if you can see the visceral anger I have, but I'm angry at this—I'm extremely angry at this. It is one thing to go up and exercise your First Amendment right, which we so dearly take as a sacred right to express. But again, the moment you move to violence, that goes out the window." As for which was the "opposing political side," ABC News quotes Duval County Democratic Party Chair Daniel Henry as saying the teens carried Trump flags and zeroed in on individuals who were carrying Harris/Walz signs. (More Election 2024 stories.)
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