Kathleen Casillo: NYC woman who plowed into 50 BLM protestors in 2020 rejects plea deal for second time
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY: Kathleen Casillo, who was accused of driving into 50 Black Lives Matter protestors at the Manhattan intersection of 39th Street and Third Avenue on December 11, 2020, rejected a plea deal for the second time on Tuesday, November 29. She appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court where she was offered six days of community service and one-year license suspension but she instead opted to go for a trial.
According to DailyMail, Casillo, 54, who attended the first proceeding on December 1, 2021, could face seven years in prison after rejecting the deal. As stated by NY Post, Casillo was driving her black BMW sedan with her then 29-year-old daughter in the passenger seat on December 11 when they encountered a BLM protest against the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detentions in Midtown. Video showed Casillo with protesters in front of her car before she accelerated the car and plowed through a group of 50 protesters. Injured protestors were taken to Bellevue Hospital for treatment. Nine protesters were wounded in the incident.
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In defense, Casillo said that the protesters approached her BMW and called her a “white priviige b***h” and started hitting her car. Following which, she was released just hours after her arrest and was issued a desk appearance ticket for the incident, as previously stated. Then on February 22, 2021, she was charged with reckless assault in the third degree.
'I just feared for my daughter's life'
Commenting on the incident, protester Roque Rodriguez said, as reported by AMNY, that “Kathleen Casillo drove her car at top speed through a crowd of human beings. I was one of those human beings, I never saw her coming. She hit me flush from behind and set my body flying and flipping through the air and she kept driving. It’s white supremacy that allowed Kathleen to believe she had the right to end the lives of anyone that got in her way, especially BLM protesters." While Casillo told DailyMail in 2021, "My side of the story was we were attacked by people who were going to break my daughter's window and pull her out of the car, so I feared [for] my life." After rejecting the plea last year, she said, "I'm going to court to clear my name because I'm not guilty. I feel sick. I never intended on hurting anyone. I just feared for my daughter's life more than anybody. I thought they were going to pull her out of the car. They’re just making the black community look like they’re thugs. One of my closest friends is a woman of color, from when I was 19 years old, so it’s not a black, white thing. I don’t know even know the color of the people that I hit. It was all mixed."