Presiding at the advice-of-rights hearing on St. Thomas Monday for Tom Oat, Territorial Court Judge Ive Swan said he will consider harsher charges than those the St. John newspaper editor and publisher now faces.
In finding probable cause for the citizen's arrest of Oat on Friday, Swan said Oat should have been charged with third-degree assault for threatening to strike a Public Works Department employee with a rock.
The 47-year-old publisher of the Tradewinds weekly newspaper had been charged with simple assault and trespassing based on a complaint filed by Ralph Titre, weighmaster at the Susannaberg transfer station. Titre told the judge he was hit in the chest by Oat's camera as he tried to stop the publisher from taking his picture.
When the judge asked the weighmaster how close the defendant came in attempting to snap his picture, Titre said, "close enough for me to knock him out."
Titre testified that he asked Oat three times to go speak with his supervisor, Public Works Deputy Commissioner Ira Wade, at the Public Works office a short distance away. Instead, he said, Oat brandished his camera and tried to take pictures. As the confrontation escalated, Titre said, Wade rushed down to the transfer station gate and urged his weighmaster to back off.
"When he thought I was going to take the camera away, he hit me with the camera in my chest," Titre said. "Then he went to take up a rock to bust my head." Swan asked what Titre said when he saw Oat pick up the rock. "He looked like he was going to send it my way, and that's when my boss came down and said ‘Titre, don't to it.' "
Defense attorney Brenda Spears asked Titre why Wade told him to send Oat to the Public Works office. Titre said he didn't know. When Spears tried to ask him why he and co-worker Patrick Moorhead began chasing Oat away from the gate, the judge stopped her. "You're getting into discovery. This is just probable cause," he said.
Then, turning to the defendant, Swan said: "I find probable cause to charge you with first-degree assault, and don't be surprised if the government charges you with third-degree assault, because I find there's cause for that, as well."
Swan told Oat he had erred by ignoring Titre's instructions to report to the office. There are remedies for members of the press being kept off premises by authorities, he said, but storming the gates is not one of them.
Oat said nothing during the proceedings, which took place on the day the latest issue of Tradewinds appeared on St. John newsstands.
On the front page of the newspaper is a photograph of Titre with his hands in the air and his back to the camera at the transfer station. The caption states that Titre is pictured closing the landfill gate "before chasing Tradewinds editor Tom Oat away from the entrance to the public facility and assaulting him in an attempt to take his camera."
Inside the newspaper, in articles under Oat's byline, are references to "allegations" that Wade has violated a number of Public Works regulations and that the Susannaberg landfill is being used as a "chop shop" for stripping vehicles seized unlawfully to sell the parts; and to what are described as police efforts at Zone A Command Friday afternoon to prevent an associate from posting bail for Oat so he would not have to stay in jail over the weekend. Assistant Attorney General Renee Gumbs submitted a copy of the newspaper to the court as evidence.
Oat said he would not comment on the advice-of-rights hearing. He indicated that he would say more about his motives at his arraignment, scheduled for 9 a.m. June 22 before Judge Swan.
