Three construction workers who face felony charges for an alleged attack on a Black police officer are pushing back against the allegations, arguing that authorities should have pinned the assault on the cop, not them.
Matthew Devlin, Garrett Gibbs, and Donnie Hurley Jr. all face felony assault and kidnapping charges after allegedly shouting racial slurs at a Black cop and attacking him.
The incident happened on Sept. 26 in St. Louis, Missouri, in a road construction zone.
The officer, who was off-duty and dressed in plainclothes, drove his unmarked vehicle into an area where traffic cones were placed. Police told local news outlets that an altercation started between the road workers and the unidentified officer over confusion about work zone boundaries.
Witnesses reportedly heard Devlin tell the officer to “go back to the hood with your gold chain” and that he did not “belong down here,” according to court filings. Gibbs and Hurley are accused of holding the officer down as Devlin repeatedly struck him with a hard hat. Devlin and Gibbs also allegedly held the cop in a chokehold.
However, Gibbs said the events leading up to and during the altercation were drastically different than how they’re being depicted in charging documents.
He told Fox 2 that the off-duty cop was the one who initiated the argument with the workers and launched an assault against them. On the night of the incident, he said he was working for a different contractor in an area near where the altercation started. He witnessed an angry driver pull into the zone and start an argument with other construction workers.
“I noticed the argument for probably 10 to 15 seconds, and then I noticed the door was open and the guy was outside his vehicle, and that’s pretty hefty — you know, a guy getting out of his vehicle in a work zone like somebody coming into your office and causing a problem,” Gibbs said. “He wanted to turn, and he kept saying that he was a police officer so he could make that turn.”
Gibbs snapped a picture of the officer’s license plate in case he did “something crazy.” He said the altercation escalated when the cop “took a swing at one of the workers,” and missed, so he hit Gibbs instead.
“He caught me right in the mouth here,” Gibbs said.
He said the other two workers held the cop down until on-duty police officers arrived.
Gibbs said police cuffed the off-duty cop and escorted him away, while he, Devlin, and Hurley returned to work. The workers also relayed their suspicions to police that the cop might have been drunk.
Authorities were on scene from 10:30 p.m. to 3 a.m. and ultimately decided to let the off-duty cop go. No one was arrested that night.
“I don’t believe he was breathalyzed. I don’t know if the car was searched or anything, so the police officers were informed that we believed he was drunk,” Gibbs said.
St. Louis County Police spokesperson Sgt. Tracy Panus later confirmed to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that on-duty cops at the scene did conduct field sobriety tests on the officer after a 911 caller made “accusations of alcohol use.” He did not show signs of intoxication, they report.
Authorities also confirmed that he was assigned to an administrative role following the incident. He returned to his full patrol duties this week.
Attorneys for the three road workers reasserted Gibbs’ version of events in a court hearing on Oct. 15. They argued that clients never initiated the assault and requested the judge to reduce their bonds.
Devlin’s bond was set at as $250,000 cash only with no 10% bond, while Gibbs and Hurley had bonds set at $100,000 cash only, no 10% bond.
Their request was denied later that same afternoon.
“This is a case of prosecutors looking out for police officers who are conducting investigations of other police officers,” Devlin’s attorney, John Rogers, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “This prosecution is overly zealous. The elements of kidnapping cannot be met. The case is overcharged. They ran up multiple counts of armed criminal action based on a fight instigated by a police officer in a construction zone.”
Rogers stated in court that every witness he interviewed said the officer threw the first punch, but prosecutors maintained that witness statements they gathered reveal the cop was the victim and that Devlin escalated the confrontation to violence.
The incident drew the attention and ire of several advocacy organizations.
The Ethical Society of Police in St. Louis condemned the attack, and said the officer’s agency treated him as a suspect and handcuffed him while “giving weight to the lies of his attackers.”
St. Louis NAACP President John Bowman stated that he hoped the defendants would be charged with hate crimes because of the hate speech used in the attack. The Council of American-Islamic Relations also demanded the attack be investigated as a hate crime.
Even though court documents accuse Devlin of using racial slurs in the incident, St. Louis police and prosecutors determined that the charges did not meet the criteria for hate crime enhancements.
