Minyvonne Burke is an advanced breaking news reporter for NBC News.
Tom Winter is a New York-based correspondent dealing with crime, courts, terrorism and financial fraud on the east coast of the NBC News Research Unit.
Contributed by Phil Helsel.
Suspected that an off-duty police officer in Rhode Island, who was running for state senator, attacked a female enemy during the right to abortion , Arrested on suspicion of assault Protest Friday night.
Providence police patrolman Jean Lugo, 35, was arrested on charges of simple assault and chaotic behavior, state police said Saturday. Lugo crouched, was charged and released, it said. Jennifer Roke, running for the 29th district of the
state, said she had finished speaking at a rally outside the State Capitol of Providencewhen Lugo was attacked on Friday. ..
The assault was partially video-captured by journalists Bill Bartholomew and Bartholomew Town podcasts.
"I'm the organizer of reproductive rights&I'm a candidate for the state legislature. After speaking at our Roe rally last night, a Republican opposition police officer attacked me violently. I did, "Rourke wrote in a Twitter post. It contained a video.
"This is a black woman running for the office. I won't give up."
In the video, a man throws two punches at a woman and throws her head once. It seems to show how you hit it. A spokesman for the campaign toldCNBCthat Roke went to the hospital for a CT scan.
The Providence Police Departmentsaid it had begun a criminal investigation into thecase and took Lugo on paid leave until the results of the investigation and administrative review were available.
After admitting the charges, Lugo was charged in front of a justice of the peace and released at his own discretion, state police said in a statement on Saturday.
He is scheduled for a retrial in the district court on July 8, police said. Online court records did not appear to indicate the case, and it was not clear whether Lugo had a lawyer late Saturday.
Lugo, who has been in the department for three years, briefly described the incident on Twitter.
"I will not run for any office this fall," he postedby. He was running for District 29 as a Republican. The account didn't seem to exist late Saturday.
Saturday, I couldn't ask Lugo and Roke for comment.
Lugo said in a statement to CNBC that he was "in a situation where individuals should not see themselves" and "a group of agitators tried to protect someone who was attacking." ..
"At this point, there is a pending internal investigation that reveals the facts of the case, and I urge my family and I to ensure privacy," he said at the time. ..
Providence says thatprotesters are taken tostreet after the Supreme Courtoverturns the Roe v. Wade case of Landmark. It was just one of many cities across the country that I saw. Constitutional right to abortion.
