Police said they arrested a man who drove his SUV through a “No Kings” protest Saturday, hitting at least one person.
The Culpeper Police Department (CPD) said officers stopped Joseph R. Checklick Jr, 21, of Culpeper after they saw him drive recklessly through the group in the area of 801 James Madison Hwy.
Where’s the attempted murder charge?
Bare minimum should be assault & battery with a deadly weapon.
Cops aren’t lawyers. The charges they are booked with are not necessarily the charges they will face once the DA has heard from stakeholders.
You don’t need to interview people to know they pointed a vehicle at a crowd.
You also don’t need anything more than a couple perfunctory charges to arrest someone. It’s the lawyers’ job to figure out what the actual charges will be. Don’t ask too much from police, or you may get too much from police.
Edit: Murder is a much more technical charge with evidentiary requirements of intent. You have to have some kind of actual evidence in your possession that at the time of the attempt, they had the intention of murder in their mind. You don’t have that when arresting a guy at the scene of a chaotic, still evolving tragedy. You just don’t.