When a car smashed into two members of the Florida Gay Men’s Chorus at Wilton Manor’s Pride Parade on Saturday and left one dead and the other injured, the mayor of nearby Fort Lauderdale and the Alphabet activists on Twitter rushed to judgement, portraying a tragic accident as something sinister.
It was a terrorist attack, they said. And Governor Ron DeSantis was to blame. In April, they fumed, DeSantis had signed an anti-riot bill that (in their warped perspective) “made it legal” for motorists to run over protestors who block roads.
But it wasn’t a terrorist attack. It was an accident. The driver, police allege, was a 77-year-old homosexual and member the chorus, as well as a participant in the homosexual event.
The Facts
As Fort Lauderdale’s Sun-Sentinel reported, “a truck plowed through a crowd at an LGBTQ Pride parade Saturday night, killing one person and injuring another — but the 77-year-old man behind the wheel did not intend to hurt a soul, police say.”
Indeed, the driver himself is a member of a homosexual group participating in the parade:
The man was physically unable to walk in the parade, so his truck was chosen as the lead vehicle. Police say he was inching forward when he accelerated unexpectedly, hitting two pedestrians.
The driver knew both men who were hit. All three were members of the Fort Lauderdale Gay Men’s Chorus.
The driver wore a chorus T-shirt, and adorned his truck with a “large Pride flag,” the newspaper reported.
Said the Wilton Manors police chief, “[Saturday’s] incident was a tragic accident, and not a criminal act directed at anyone, or any group of individuals.”
The Mayor and the Twitter Mob
That truth didn’t he stop Fort Lauderdale’s homosexual mayor or a Twitter mob from reaching for a rhetorical rope.
“This is a terrorist attack against the LGBT community,” leftist Dean Trantalis told Local 10 News. “This is exactly what it is. Hardly an accident. It was deliberate, it was premeditated, and it was targeted against a specific person. Luckily they missed that person, but unfortunately, they hit two other people.”
He repeated the charge to the Sun Sentinel:
This was a terrorist attack against the LGBTQ community. He came here to destroy people. This was clearly no accident.
In fact, of course, the driver didn’t go there to “destroy people.” He went there to celebrate “pride.” But the flake hit the gas instead of the brake.
Likewise, though, a Twitter lynch mob lit torches:
“I wonder where they got this idea from?” one angry Pride partisan wrote:
This is what you get when you make up laws justifying driving your car through a group of people (demonstrators). #DeathSantis is as guilty as the person who drove the truck through the crowd. #RemoveRon
“Domestic terrorism made legal by bigot #KimJongRon #DeathSantis,” another wrote. “Charlottesville part 2. #RemoveRon.”
Wrote a third:
Gov. Ron DeSantis made it legal to run over protesters in Florida. He was warned it would lead to murderous actions. Signed it into law anyway. Now two are dead. They were just marching in a #Pride parade. #DeathSantis has blood on his corrupt hands.
DeSantis did no such thing. The anti-riot law he signed grants immunity from civil lawsuits to motorists who, fearing for their lives, escape the left-wing terrorists who block roads during “protests” by driving through them.
Unsurprisingly, pro-riot leftists have filed a federal lawsuit to overturn the law, which passed because of the destructive George Floyd riots that swept the nation last summer.
Hat Tip: Legal Insurrection
