ATLANTA — The man who rushed the stage Saturday at a Donald Trump rally in Ohio is Thomas DiMassimo, 22.
The college student was arrested Saturday on misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and inducing panic, according to The Dayton Daily News.
The newspaper reported that Secret Service and other security officers “swarmed Dimassimo as he reached the back of the stage and tried to scramble up, about 8 to 10 feet from where the Republican front-runner was speaking to a large crowd” in a hangar near the airport. %
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Video of the event shows four Secret Service agents leaping into action and surrounding the Republican front-runner until DiMassimo was hauled away.
“I was ready for him, but it’s much easier if the cops do it, don’t we agree?” Trump said.
The Dayton Daily News reported that most people at the rally didn’t see the incident, but Dal Haybron did. The newspaper quoted him as saying Secret Service agents were “too gentle.”
“He jumped over the rail and immediately they just nailed him,” Haybron said. “Boom. Done.” %
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The newspaper also reported that DiMassimo, as a Wright State University junior last year, helped lead an anti-racism protest that included students standing on American flags and holding signs saying, “Not my flag.”
“I thought it would ruffle some feathers, but I did not anticipate how tense the backlash would become,” DiMassimo told the newspaper at the time. “If anything, all that has shown is that people in this area and people on the Internet care more about a symbolic piece of cloth, than they do a black person’s life … or, even beyond that, our Constitutional rights.”
Police say DiMassimo has done his share of protesting, and they say that's what he was doing at Stone Mountain in the summer of 2015.
DiMassimo was seen protesting a pro-Confederate flag rally at Stone Mountain. He was also seen stomping on a flag.