Karen Amsden, the mother of one of the dozens of white supremacists who were arrested in a U-Haul in Idaho on Saturday, wasn’t thrilled to find out what her son was up to that day.
Amsden’s son, 27-year-old Jared Michael Boyce of Springville, Utah, was one of the 31 members of the neo-Nazi Patriot Front group who traveled in the back of a U-Haul truck to allegedly disrupt a Pride event in Coeur d’Alene. Law enforcement pulled over the truck and charged the men with conspiracy to riot.
Amsden told the Daily Beast that she forced her son to make a decision once he returned home after his arrest: His family, or the neo-Nazis.
“I told him, ‘Well, then you can’t live here. You can choose between Patriot Front and your family.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, I can’t quit Patriot Front.’ I’m like, ‘Well, then you’ve just chosen. So pack your stuff and get out of my house,'” Amsden recounted.
Boyce’s father left the family years ago and came out as gay, according to Amsden.
She also told the Daily Beast that she’s deliberately speaking out about Boyce in the hopes that Patriot Front, careful about maintaining members’ anonymity, ditches her son and he returns to his senses.
“I would love to do whatever I can to out him [as a Patriot Front member] so that he can’t be a part of it,” Amsden said. “And that they don’t want him to be a part of their group because his mom has loose lips and a big mouth and he’s never going to get away with anything.”
Police in Coeur d’Alene have said that they made the arrest after they were tipped off by a concerned citizen who saw a group of men who “looked like a little army” piling into a U-Haul truck at a hotel parking lot.
Officers said they pulled over the U-Haul a few blocks away from a Pride event downtown and found 31 men dressed in the Patriot Front uniform of khakis and white masks in the back of the truck. They were allegedly carrying riot shields, shin guards and at least one smoke grenade with them, along with documents laying out their riot plans in extensive detail.
