
The intensity of this political season is now provoking dangerous forms of neighborhood bullying. In Michigan, a twenty-two year-old man aimed his ATV at an eighty year-old man he spotted erecting a Trump sign in his own front yard. The eighty-year-old man was struck and critically injured in the politically-motivated attack.
The attack on the elderly man was the culmination of a Sunday morning vandalism spree, wherein the suspect attacked a pair of parked vehicles, one of which sported a Trump bumper sticker and the other of which had a bumper sticker expressing support for the police. One of the vehicles got its windows smashed out, the other suffered from an advanced case of slashed tires.
The morning’s violence came not long after Matthew Crooks, a twenty-year-old man, attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania political rally.
The Houghton County Sheriff’s Department released a statement saying that they are operating on the assumption that, since all the victims and property suffering attacks were in close proximity to signs labeling them as associated with the political right, the motivation for the crimes was principally political.
The assailant in the July 21st attack in the city of Hancock, Michigan, reportedly then called police on Monday July 22nd to confess to a crime which occurred during the preceding 24 hours and involved “an ATV driver.” He asked police to come around to his residence and arrest him.
However, when officers reached his home, they found the man dead from what appeared to be a self-inflicted bullet wound.
Police do not currently believe that any other parties were involved in the attacks. The electronics found in the dead man’s home have been seized.
When speaking to the Detroit News, Hancock Police Chief Tami Sleeman said that the effect of the attacks upon the community is “unsettling,” and that the police force is now concerned for the safety of its residents. “Politics,” she insisted, “should not bring violence.”