A man armed with two guns was arrested at a Los Angeles event in which Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was speaking Friday.
Kennedy posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that a man “wearing two shoulder holsters with loaded pistols and spare ammunition magazines” tried to approach him at a Hispanic Heritage speech at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles.
“He identified himself as a member of my security detail. Armed GDBA [Gavin de Becker and Associates] team members moved quickly to isolate and detain the man until LAPD arrived to make the arrest. I’m also grateful to LAPD for its rapid response,” Kennedy wrote. He added that the man was wearing a U.S. Marshals Service badge.
The Los Angeles Police Department told NBC4 that the man in question did not point the weapon at anyone but was arrested on a gun charge and for impersonating a U.S. marshal. The incident happened around 4:30 p.m., the LAPD said.
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The LAPD said it, not the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will handle the case.
The Wilshire Ebell Theatre is located at 4401 W. 8th St. His campaign billed the event as one in which Kennedy would address the economy and crisis at the southern border, challenging President Joe Biden’s border policy “on humanitarian grounds.”
In July, Kennedy, who is running as a Democrat, said he was denied Secret Service protection, a fact he highlighted in his post on X.
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“I’m still entertaining a hope that President Biden will allow me Secret Service protection,” he wrote. “I am the first presidential candidate in history to whom the White House has denied a request for protection.”
Kennedy’s father was assassinated in 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, minutes after winning California’s Democratic primary. Meanwhile, President John F. Kennedy, the current Democratic nominee’s uncle, was assassinated in 1963 in Dallas, Texas.
Despite his desire for Secret Service protection, NBC News reported Kennedy Jr. falls short on much of the service’s public criteria for getting a protective detail.
