LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) - A Louisiana prosecutor has brought charges against an activist who grilled hot dogs and hamburgers near the mayor’s home during last summer’s protests against racial injustice.
Tara Fogleman will plead not guilty next week to misdemeanor charges of disturbing the peace and obstructing a public passage in Lafayette Parish, attorney Marcus Allen said Friday.
Fogleman, who is white but has Black children and lives in the predominantly African American north side of town, was arrested in August. At the time, many in Lafayette were protesting the death of Trayford Pellerin, a Black man shot by police outside a convenience store, and the city’s decision to close four recreation centers on the north side of Lafayette.
She told news outlets after she was released that she was trying to reach out to Mayor-President Josh Guillory, who she said had been ignoring people from the north side and neither referred to Pellerin by name nor offered condolences to Pellerin’s mother.
Allen told news outlets that he and his client were both surprised that the district attorney brought the charges.
“I think you have a bigger fish to fry. A lot bigger fish to fry with the Pellerin case. This is ancillary stuff,” Allen told KATC-TV.
“I hope that at the end of the day we’re able to walk away with this thing, with some lesson, and that both sides can walk away amicably,” he told The Advertiser. “And I think we can.”
Fogleman told news media after her release that she set up the grill hoping Guillory would come out and talk with her over a meal.
The grill was not in front of Guillory’s house but on the street between his house and a neighbor’s, she told KATC-TV.
“I would not call it a protest. I would call it reaching out. He is uncomfortable in our neighborhood. I decided to meet him where he is comfortable,” she said in August.
Instead, she was arrested.
“My family felt civil unrest. Members from the community came to my house. My wife and children had to witness that,” Guillory told news media in August.
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