- The man accused of assaulting an NBC
News reporter during aHurricane Ida broadcast has been arrested. - Police charged Benjamin Eugene Dagley with two counts of simple assault, one count of disturbing the peace, and one count of violating an emergency curfew.
- According to Cleveland.com, Dagley broke into a factory in 2017 that he once owned in an attempt to make cyanide gas.
An Ohio man accused of assaulting an NBC News reporter during a live Hurricane
The Gulfport Police Department said Benjamin Eugene Dagley, of Wooster, Ohio, has been charged with two counts of simple assault, one count of disturbing the peace, and one count of violating an emergency curfew in the case.
The news correspondent, Shaquille Brewster, was reporting live on the beach about the postal service's return to Mississippi post-Ida when a white pickup truck parked behind him.
A man police identified as Dagley quickly ran out of the truck and accosted Brewster and his crew while yelling something indiscernible about "accuracy," according to live footage of the incident.
Police issued an arrest warrant for Dagley one day after the confrontation and noted that he may be in violation of his probation in Ohio. In 2017, Dagley drilled holes into chemical tanks of hydrochloric acid and other substances in an attempt to make cyanide gas at an electroplating company he formerly owned, according to a report from Cleveland.com.
Brewster tweeted shortly after the incident that he and his team were "all good." The journalist traveled to Louisiana after the experience and was back to reporting on the hurricane in New Orleans on September 1.
Hurricane Ida knocked out all eight of the city's transmission lines, eliminating electricity for hundreds of thousands in the region as a sweltering heatwave continues to grip the area.