An armed former Republican candidate for the North Carolina House of Representatives was arrested and charged with second-degree trespassing Tuesday, BuzzFeed News reported.
In a video that got more than 20,000 upvotes on Reddit, 36-year-old Justin Dunn is seen sitting in a chair outside of a polling station in Charlotte with a weapon strapped to his side.
Charlotte police officers enter the frame and place handcuffs on Dunn, who says, “I was not informed by anybody who owns the property to leave.”
A bystander says, “And he’s armed, you need to disarm him, officer.” The officers place Dunn under arrest and drive him away from the polling station.
Approximately two hours after the arrest, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department announced it received a complaint that Dunn had returned to the station. The department said Dunn “voluntarily left without further issues” after an official told him to leave, and he was banned from the station.
The police department also tweeted that it is “committed to protecting the right of our community members to engage in safe, secure and unimpeded access to voting sites.”
Although Dunn did not break North Carolina’s open carry laws by possessing a weapon, some described his behavior as “voter intimidation.”
Charlotte Agenda, a local news source, tweeted that a “handful of people left without voting when they saw him.”
Poll watcher and retired Navy veteran Tim Carmicheal told Charlotte Agenda that if a Black individual had brought a gun to the polling station, “they would have emptied the whole damn precinct.”
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department did not immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment.
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