Suspect indicted in DC park ‘bias-motivated’ pepper spray attacks acquitted on all charges – WTOP News

A former Prince George’s County, Maryland, elementary school teacher who was arrested on assault charges in Virginia and indicted for allegedly attacking people with pepper spray in a D.C. park was found not guilty.

Years after Michael Thomas Pruden, 50, was hit with seven federal assault charges related to “bias-motivated assaults” on men from 2018 to 2021 in Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park, a jury of his peers in Washington D.C. acquitted him of all charges.

Initially, prosecutors argued before a grand jury that Pruden attacked victims because of their perceived sexual orientation, targeting a park known for cruising, or “a meeting place for men seeking consensual sex with other men,” according to charging documents.

The indictment identified a total of five victims who were assaulted during evening activities at the park in D.C., claiming Pruden pretended to be a member of law enforcement and attacked unsuspecting men.

“Before spraying the men, Pruden pretended to be a Park Police officer, shined a flashlight in the victims’ faces and gave the victims police-style directives,” the department said in a July 2022 press release.

Prosecutors also brought forth digital evidence from Pruden — “text or social media messages or profiles that reference ‘cruising,’ Meridian Hill Park or Malcolm X Park,” and social media activity on platforms like Jack’d and Grindr ahead of this week’s jury trial. Jurors began deliberation Thursday and reached their decision Friday afternoon.

Pruden’s acquittal comes more than two years after his arrest in Norfolk, Virginia, due in part to significant delays in the trial. Notable issues included changes in representation and motions to bifurcate the trial — separating the question of whether Pruden committed the offenses charged from deliberation on the reason being the victims’ espoused or assumed sexual orientation.

The jury’s decision also followed charges for attacks on two people at Daingerfield Island in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2021. The Alexandria case also concluded with Pruden being found not guilty verdict in both incidents.

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