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Political activist arrested while wearing terrorist costume
(AP)
SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — The lawyer who divulged President Bush´s drunken-driving arrest days before the 2000 election was arrested at gunpoint Tuesday after was seen on a highway overpass carrying a toy gun while dressed in an Osama bin Laden costume.
Tom Connolly, 49, of Scarborough, was charged with criminal threatening after he stood at a construction site visible to commuters on Interstate 295 while wearing the Halloween costume and waving a sign.
Police officers responding to motorists´ calls found a man wearing a white robe and carrying a fake assault rifle.
Before he was arrested, Connolly walked toward officers as what appeared to be plastic grenades tumbled onto the ground, an officer said. The costume included plastic dynamite, grenades, and a replica of an AK-47 assault rifle.
"The whole thing is just incredibly bizarre," said South Portland Police Chief Ed Googins. "It just crossed the line."
Connolly, who ran for governor as a Democrat in 1998 and lost, met with reporters briefly after posting $500 cash bail to secure his release from the Cumberland County Jail in Portland. Criminal threatening is a misdemeanor.
"There was a First Amendment this morning when I woke up. I don´t know how it evaporated with the dawn," he said.
Connolly, a Portland attorney, has been known for wearing costumes to make political statements, typically donning a George W. Bush mask and dancing herky-jerky style for passing motorists. His wife has described him as "marvelously eccentric."
But he took it too far with the terrorist outfit, Googins said.
Connolly was carrying a sign that said "I love TABOR," a reference to the Taxpayer Bill of Rights on the ballot a week from today. But at least one of the people who saw it thought it said "I love the Taliban," Googins said.
Officers who arrived on the location of a future ramp at the Westbrook Street exit didn´t know what they were dealing with. "There´s no way of telling from a distance whether the gun is real or a fake," Googins said.
Police want to make sure charges are pressed. "For someone to think this is an innocent prank, this is not the case," he said.
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