While supposedly breaking up a fight, self-proclaimed superhero Phoenix Jones was arrested after pepper spraying several individuals. Jones, age 23, was charged with 4th-degree assault and spent 7 hours in King County Jail. He was able to make bail which was set at $3800 and has a court appearance scheduled for Thursday, the 13th of October.
Jones’ real name is Benjamin John Francis Fodor and he is the leader of the Rain City Superhero Movement whose aim is to help keep the streets of Seattle a little safer. He and his men all have either military or mixed martial arts backgrounds. On his Facebook page of more than 10,000 likes, he claims that he is an icon “that the average person doesn’t have to walk around and see bad things and do nothing.”
The entire incident was recorded on a 14 minute video shot by one of Jones’s men and shows Jones and his men breaking up a fight involving nearly a dozen individuals on Columbia street near Alaskan Way. In the video, it is unclear what is going on due to the camera man moving the camera so much but you can hear one of Jones’ men shouting "Phoenix, look down, look down. Huge fight." Then you hear Jones yelling “Break it up!” and approaching the group. Then, you can see one of the women in the group assaulting Jones and his group with her purse. As for the pepper spray, u can clearly see it in Jones’s hand and you can clearly see him use it on several of the individuals who got close to him. Later, two men from the group began chasing Jones and his men around Columbia street and the Alaskan Way Viaduct in a black Cadillac Escalade.
The people who were supposedly fighting, claimed that there was no fight and that they were merely just dancing with each other after leaving a night club. They said that Jones charged them out of nowhere and started pepper spraying members of their group for no apparent reason. They want Jones arrested for assaulting them with the pepper spray.
Apparently, Jones has a history of getting himself directly involved in these types of situations and has been reported on many occasions for pepper spraying people. He has also been told repeatedly to call the police when he observes these incidents happening which he has been doing but at the same time still getting himself directly involved. Jones even had a protection warrant placed against him by a man who claimed that Jones drove by his home and threatened the man and his family on several occasions.
Original sources:
Will, it's really difficult to read your post because of the "highlighted" white parts.. I still managed to read it by highlighting it with my mouse but you should try to always view your blog after you post it so that you know what your audience is viewing! Now about your writing. Everything was very clear and to the point and looked and read like something i'd see in a little subsection of a newspaper. You didn't loose me anywhere, and everything flowed pretty well. I was actually considering writing about the Seattle "hero" who was beat with a shoe of one of the people he was trying to "protect" - the "victims" said it was one of the scariest moments in their lives when they encountered the "helpful" citizen. So I think your topic is interesting and i'm not sure how long it is word wise but IF YOU NEED TO add length you can always discuss previous stories or incidences relating to your topic. I liked it overall. Good job.
ReplyDeleteHey i thought the article was pretty interesting, I heard about Phoenix Jones from a similar article. I liked how you didn't use much bias, and i thought it was very well written. I think you should add some pictures to help people visualize who Phoenix Jones actually is. Plus i think you should some more content and more background information on the Superhero. You can add information like how long has he been Phoenix Jones, and how many superheros are in Seattle. Overall though i thought the article was interesting and probably something i would read on times.com or something.
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