By KYLE MARTIN
kmartin@hernandotoday.com

WEEKI WACHEE - No arrest was made when a detective finished his investigation of an angry veteran who stormed through an anti-war protest in Weeki Wachee last month.

But charges could still be filed.

Brian Moore, who organized the demonstration, said he wants to work things out with the 32-year-old suspect, Forrest Fogarty. But if Fogarty shows no remorse and refuses to offer a public apology, Moore plans to press criminal mischief charges.

“We feel he threatened us,” said Moore, chairman of the Naturecoast Coalition for Peace and Justice. “We thought it was serious and that’s why we filed a complaint.”

The investigator, Detective Stacy Rodriguez, considered building a case for assault or battery charges, a report shows, but none of the protestors felt threatened enough to justify the crime.

In his interview with Rodriguez, Fogarty said he had recently returned from serving 18 months in Iraq and grew angry when he saw the protestors. He regretted yelling obscenities and kicking the signs, but felt he had the same rights to freedom of speech as they did, Rodriguez reported.

Fogarty could not be reached for comment.

On March 17, Moore’s protesters gathered in a popular spot at the corner of Cortez Boulevard and Commercial Way to mark the fourth anniversary of the war.

Sometime that morning, a black pickup pulled off the road near the CVS/pharmacy and Fogarty hopped out.

When he first reported the incident March 19, Moore said Fogarty “was enraged and yelling profanities” because of the protest. Moore described Fogarty as roughly 22 years old and told a deputy he “was very confrontational and scared many of the (protestors).”

Moore went on to say that Fogarty pulled placards out of the protester’s hands and kicked signs out of the ground, according to the report.

Moore tried to calm him down, but the man let loose with a flood of profanity and drove off in his truck. One of the protesters wrote down the pickup’s license plate number, which Moore provided to the sheriff’s office the following day.

A vehicle database placed that tag on a 1998 black Dodge truck registered to Fogarty. That gave Rodriguez a name and a picture of the suspect when assigned to the case.

On April 11, Moore and two other witnesses provided a more in-depth statement.

One witness, Helen Choate, told the detective she saw Fogarty kicking several protest signs and yelling obscenities. Choate said she “never felt threatened” by Fogarty, according to Rodriguez. Another witness corroborated Choate’s statements.

Rodriguez had assembled a photo pack that included Fogarty’s photo. Neither Moore nor the two others picked out the suspect’s picture.

Another witness, Dianne Maughn, told the same story of a man on a rampage. But although he “was very angry,” Maughn said she didn’t think that Fogarty would cause anyone harm, the detective reported.

Reporter Kyle Martin can be contacted at 352-544-5271.

 

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