An official with the Massachusetts campaign to reelect former President Donald Trump was allegedly assaulted Thursday afternoon in South Boston by minors who the worker said were ticked off because he was carrying a Trump flag.
Brian Foley, 26, of South Boston, who is well-known for flying Trump flags across Boston, said he was on his way home from a standout in the neighborhood when the minors approached him. He said one minor threatened “to shoot me in the back of my head for walking around with a (Trump) flag.”
“At this point, he’s grabbing for his pants, and I can see something hanging out of the waistband so I’m not sure if it’s an actual gun or not,” said Foley, who helps run the Trump campaign in Boston and serves as a senior graphic designer for Massachusetts for Trump 2024. “I take it very seriously because I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve been attacked multiple times.”
But the minors involved in the incident said it was Foley who “was the aggressor and attacked them first,” according to a police report provided to The Boston Herald Friday afternoon.
Foley, who said he plans to press charges against the minors, was first “verbally assaulted by a bunch of youths because he was carrying a ‘Trump’ flag,” the redacted police report said. Foley then told Boston police that one minor said “you’re going to get shot for carrying that flag.”
“(Foley) then stated the youths physically attacked him and he began to fight back to protect himself,” the police report said.
Another adult, whose name was redacted in the police report, saw what was happening to Foley and used pepper spray against the minors “in order to protect (Foley) from the attack,” according to the report.
In an interview with the Herald Friday morning, Foley said he did not start walking away nor turn his back to the minors after one allegedly threatened to shoot him. At that point, Foley said the other adult “grabbed me by the throat, ripped my sign out of my hand, (and) told me he was helping me.”
“But I don’t really see that as helping,” he said. “Once that happened, the kids felt confident enough that there were two other adults trying to fight me as well that they jumped in.”
He said he was pushed up against a car, had his head kicked, was repeatedly punched in the face, and “they tried stabbing me with something.”
“I have a slice across my throat,” he said. “It looked like a box cutter but it happened so fast that I couldn’t see. So I’m not sure what they tried stabbing me with but I have a cut across my jugular.”
The police report said Foley had “visible scratches on his head and neck” and was transported to Tufts Medical Center for further treatment, the police report said. Photos provided to the Herald by Foley show him in an ambulance wearing a neck brace and his face covered in bandages.
Foley was released from the hospital Thursday evening, he told the Herald.
The minors were also pepper sprayed and at first requested medical attention at the scene but later declined it, according to police.
The names of the minors were redacted in the police report, which did not indicate that any arrests were made.
Asked if police officers arrested any individuals as a result of the alleged assault, a spokesperson for the Boston Police Department said the report “doesn’t indicate that there are any arrests.”
Foley said the minors who attacked him were a “known group” that attended the James F. Condon School, a Boston Public Schools middle school in South Boston.
A spokesperson for Boston Public Schools referred questions about the minors to the Boston Police Department.
Foley said he does not plan to stop publicly supporting Trump flags after he was allegedly assaulted.
“If anything, it makes me go harder. This is what needs to be exposed, and this is what happens to us, and we’re being told we’re the monsters,” he said. “I had $1,200 in damage to my house last week on a Ring Camera. I have an open case with (Boston police) because kids came down, ripped off my signs, and cracked my window side.”
Former Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson, the chairman of Massachusetts for Trump 2024, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
An inquiry sent to Trump’s national campaign was not answered.
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