More SLO protesters charged over Hwy. 101 march and altercations with drivers
The San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office filed criminal charges — including one felony — against six people involved in a July 21 Black Lives Matter protest that blocked Highway 101, bringing the total number of people facing charges over that event to eight.
Early in the day, the agency filed misdemeanor charges against three men for different alleged incidents involving protesters and motorists on Highway 101 and around the downtown area on July 21.
Late Friday, another filing by the agency charged three more men over an incident on Highway 101 in which a motorist’s back windshield was smashed by a protester’s skateboard after the driver accelerated into the crowd.
One man who says he was hit and ended up on the hood of the car was among those charged Friday, even though numerous witnesses told The Tribune that the driver was aggressive and at fault.
No motorist has faced charges in any of several confrontations between marchers and drivers during the July 21 protest.
Local community groups who have organized and supported local Black Lives Matter events on Friday morning decried the charges against the first three co-defendants, each of whom are Black. Up to that point, five people of color including organizer Tianna Arata had been charged out of a majority white crowd that numbered in the hundreds.
The DA’s Office says the three people charged late Friday are white.
In response to the backlash Friday, a District Attorney’s Office spokesman said that the delay between the filing of the two complaints Friday was the unintentional result of various processing issues with the court, and that both complaints were intended to have been released into the public record at the same time Friday morning.
The latest protesters charged over the Highway 101 march include Robert Lastra Jr., who Chief Deputy District Attorney Jerret Gran says is accused of smashing the window of a silver BMW.
Lastra, 21, is facing a felony charge of vandalism of $400 or more and a misdemeanor count of false imprisonment, according to the complaint.
Gran said the CHP was expecting to arrest Lasta and book him into San Luis Obispo County Jail, where he would then be released on $0 bail due to ongoing COVID-19 safety measures at the jail.
Also charged in the complaint is Jerad Hill, 27, who is facing a misdemeanor charge of vandalism for allegedly striking the front bumper of the silver BMW with a skateboard, plus a charge of false imprisonment.
Sam Grocott, who was hit by the silver BMW and told The Tribune he only avoided serious injury because fellow protesters struck the car, forcing it to stop long enough for him to roll off the hood, was charged with three misdemeanor counts of false imprisonment.
Grocott, 25, is accused of detaining the silver BMW, as well as a black BMW on the Highway 101 off-ramp at Santa Rosa Street and a white Honda at the intersection of California and Monterey streets.
The case involving Lastra, Hill, and Grocott was filed separately from the earlier three due to the alleged felony involved.
Asked why, if video appeared to show Grocott being hit by the silver BMV, he was not considered a victim, Gran declined to comment.
Co-defendants added to Tianna Arata’s case
The march of between 200 and 300 people on Highway 101 on July 21 ultimately ended in the arrest of local Black Lives Matter organizer Tianna Arata and Elias Bautista, who is seen on video kicking a police officer as Arata is carried away to a patrol vehicle.
She is facing 13 misdemeanors and Bautista is facing a felony and two misdemeanors.
Early Friday, the DA’s Office filed charges against 24-year-old Marcus Montgomery; Joshua Powell, 23; and Amman Asfaw, 22, adding them as co-defendants in Arata’s ongoing case.
Asfaw is a local youth leader in San Luis Obispo and the president of Cal Poly’s National Society of Black Engineers. He was recently appointed chairperson of San Luis Obispo City’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force.
Montgomery was charged with four misdemeanor charges, including false imprisonment, obstructing the free movement of any person in a public place, and resisting or delaying a police officer. According to the complaint, the false imprisonment charge lists as a victim a John Doe, a “driver of Black 4-door BMW at southbound Hwy. 101 Santa Rosa Street off-ramp.”
In addition, Powell is charged with delaying two police officers, and Asfaw is charged with a single count of false imprisonment. The complaint says that Asfaw “violated the personal liberty” of occupants in the white Honda sedan at the intersection of California Boulevard and Monterey Street.
Each man was served Thursday afternoon with a letter to appear in San Luis Obispo Superior Court on Oct. 22.
Each misdemeanor count carries a maximum sentence of six months in County Jail and a $1,000 fine.
Paperwork issues caused delay of filing
When the first round of charges went public Friday morning, RACE Matters SLO, a community group that has been involved in organizing numerous protests and other events throughout the summer, called the new charges a “moral outrage.”
The group noted that, at the time, only people of color had been charged over the July 21 protest.
But Gran told The Tribune Friday that the agency had filed the latest complaint against the three white defendants in the morning, but because it was a new felony complaint — as opposed to an amendment of the existing complaint in Arata’s case — it took longer to process through the court’s criminal department.
RACE Matters SLO also accused elected District Attorney Dow of discrimination.. On Tuesday, Dow spoke at a fundraiser for a California secessionist group with a controversial keynote speaker who told an enthusiastic crowd that systemic racism doesn’t exist.
“Through his actions and associations, the DA has shown his outright discrimination toward local protest and the young Black people participating,” RACE Matters said. “He is an elected official and is supposed to be the DA for the entire county, not just people who are aligned with him politically.”
Patrick Fisher, Arata’s attorney, said that the new charges in Arata and her new co-defendants’ case were an attempt to sidestep a defense legal challenge, claiming that Arata was targeted and her First Amendment rights “trampled.”
“It’s an attempt to remedy a problem in the prosecution of Tianna,” Fisher said. “I never thought we’d be here in the middle of October and have the DA’s Office serving complaints on people for something that happened in mid-July.”
Lastra, Hill, and Grocott are scheduled to be arraigned in court Nov. 16. It was not immediately clear whether they’ve retained attorneys.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified District Attorney Dan Dow as a member of the city’s Diversity, Inclusion and Equality Task Force. He is not a member of SLO’s DEI Task Force.
This story was originally published October 16, 2020 at 6:10 PM.
