A British man arrested at a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas after trying to grab a police officer’s gun was indicted the other day on weapons charges, the authorities said.
Prosecutors charged Michael Sandford, 20, with two felony counts of being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and one count of impeding and disrupting the orderly conduct of government business, the US Attorney’s Office in Las Vegas said in a statement.
Sandford, who was in the United States unlawfully, tried to grab a police officer’s gun while attending a rally for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on June 18 before he was quickly overpowered and removed from the event, the charge sheet said.
Although an initial complaint filed after his arrest stated that he told a Secret Service agent that he had intended to kill Trump, the indictment does not charge him with plotting to kill the billionaire businessman.
Sandford went to a gun range in Vegas on the eve of the rally to take shooting lessons using a Glock 9 millimetre handgun, the same type of weapon used by the officer he allegedly tried to disarm, the indictment said.
He told officers he had gone to the range because he had never fired a gun before, and that he had driven from California to Las Vegas to shoot Trump, the complaint said.
He faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 on each count, prosecutors said.
The young man suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and his parents had warned the US authorities they were worried about him, British media reported.
Sandford was not interested in politics and wouldn’t even be able to name the US president, his father, Paul Davey, told the Portsmouth News.
“He’s never shown any violent tendencies before, he’s never been a bad person, he’s a nice kid and literally wouldn’t hurt a fly — he used to tell us not to use fly spray because he didn’t want any flies to die,” he told the paper.
Someone may have blackmailed his son or “put him up to it,” Davey added.
Sandford, who is being held without bail, is due to be arraigned next week.
