ICE agents have lost evidence ahead of Charlotte trial on protester arrests
A missing dog food bowl has thrown a wrench in the anticipated trial of two Charlotte protesters accused of assaulting federal immigration officers.
The bowl — which is now evidence in a federal case — belonged to Delilah, a shiny, coppery brown pit bull whose barks backed Heather Morrow’s voice any time she chanted “power to the people.”
After Delilah died, Morrow kept the bowl in her car and would hit it with a spoon to make noise at rallies, she told The Charlotte Observer at the federal courthouse in uptown Thursday. It was in her Subaru when she and William Stanley were arrested and charged with assaulting officers who were trying to enter the Department of Homeland Security office off Tyvola Centre Drive on Nov. 16.
Now, it is nowhere to be found.
Immigration agents in charge of handling the evidence have also lost a spoon, a bullhorn, Morrow’s car key and a ring, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Smith said.
“They just don’t have it. I don’t know what happened,” Smith told U.S. Magistrate Judge David Keesler inside a first-floor courtroom in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.
If the items were found, Smith said he would use them as evidence in a trial. Morrow’s pro bono defense attorneys, Rob Heroy and Xavier de Janon, have said the same.
CMS bus driver, UNC student arrested protesting ICE
Morrow is a 44-year-old Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools bus driver who is running for a Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners at-large seat. Stanley is a 25-year-old University of North Carolina student on sabbatical.
Both, along with others, were protesting outside the DHS office on the second day that masked U.S. Border Patrol operated in Charlotte. For a week in November, agents drove around the city and arrested people in public — outside a church, in grocery store parking lots and in a country club — as a part of a Trump-era federal immigration operation called “Charlotte’s Web.”
Video shows a protester (who looks to be Stanley but is not identified in court documents) put his hands on the front of a pickup truck driving toward the office. Then, two people seeming to be federal agents struggled with him and held him against a car. Morrow then approached and reached to one of the agent’s shoulders. A third agent tackled her to the ground.
Court documents filed by federal prosecutors say Morrow attempted “to jump on the back of (an agent) by placing both of her hands (the agent’s) shoulders while she had one foot off the ground.”
Morrow and Stanley, who is represented pro bono by Womble Bond Dicksinson partner Claire Rauscher, are charged with four misdemeanors:
- Obstructing the use of entrances on federal property.
- Impeding and disrupting the performance of official duties of government employees.
- Failing to comply with the lawful direction of an authorized individual.
- Assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating and interfering with persons performing official duties.
The first three charges are petty offenses punishable by 30 days in prison and up to a $5,000 fine. The last charge is a class A1 misdemeanor, punishable by one year in prison and up to a $100,000 fine:
Both pleaded not guilty on Thursday and requested a jury trial.
Keesler, the judge, ended discussion about where evidence disappeared to after Heroy asked for a box of tissues. Morrow had begun to cry at the mention of her dead dog’s missing bowl.
Keesler stepped down from his raised seat to shake Smith, Heroy and Rauscher’s hands, thanking them all for their work on the case. On the issue of evidence, Keesler said to Smith:
“Keep looking, will ya?”
