A spokesman for the New Orleans Police Department tells us that he does not know the motive of the alleged assault of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s chief campaign fundraiser last Friday. The comments from spokesman Bob Young come after a conservative blogger quoted Young as saying the attack was political.
The incident, in which Allee Bautsch was allegedly attacked by a group of people and suffered a broken leg, has been the center of speculation in recent days about the assailants’ motivation. Some conservative blogs wrongly claimed that Bautsch was attacked because she was purportedly wearing a Sarah Palin pin.
The plot thickened a bit after conservative blogger Pat Dollard quoted New Orleans Police Department spokesman Bob Young saying that the insults of Bautsch’s assailants were “of a political nature.” The comments were picked up by Yahoo News.
Now, Young says he was misquoted. In an email to TPM he says:
“My comments were that I did not know the motive of the attack, that the incident was still under investigation and that information was not given to me in the initial report. Mr. Dollard misquoted me and inserted his own statement to me.”
Late Update: Via the Times-Picayune. The police report on the incident, released today, suggests that the assailants did not say anything political to Bautsch and her boyfriend, Joe Brown.
According to the report, the assailants made homophobic and misogynistic insults at the couple, and remarked that “you think you’re f**king special.”
“It should be noted that other than making reference to the victims being nicely dressed, along with other observations about their physical appearance, Mr. Brown did not hear them make any other comments,” the report says.
The Times-Picayune adds:
There has been speculation that the men who injured Bautsch and Brown were part of a group of protesters that had been outside the fund-raiser earlier at Brennan’s restaurant, but the report notes that most of that group had left about an hour earlier when they were told that the dignitaries at the dinner had departed. Jindal was at the event but left the area well before Bautsch and Brown.
And here’s the police report: