Driver reportedly said he was trying to avoid hitting a dog at first, then trying to avoid a parked car, before crashing into Bar:PM
An LGBTQ+ bar owner in Missouri who was jailed after police accidentally crashed a cruiser into his establishment is facing charges filed against him by prosecutors – albeit ones that were quickly reduced amid a public outcry over the case’s circumstances.
“Nobody should have to go through this – going from being a victim to going to have to defend yourself, your family and your business,” James Pence, whose husband, Chad Morris, was arrested and charged, told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday in their home town of St Louis. “That’s not what the police are here to do.”
Morris, 37, was closing up Bar:PM, his and Pence’s drinking establishment, with one of their employees early on Monday when a police sport-utility vehicle plowed into the front of the business.
Two St Louis metro police department officers in the middle of completing their rookie probationary period were in the cruiser at the time of the wreck. In a subsequent report cited by local news station KTVI, the cruiser’s driver claimed he feared “he was traveling too close to a parked car” and overcorrected, leading to an accident.
The station reported a nearby resident describing a conversation with the driver in which the officer said he hit the bar after swerving to avoid running over a dog in the roadway. Pence – who lives above Bar:PM with Morris – said that officer told him the same thing and apologized.
