Jury convicts man who brutally assaulted pro-lifers outside Planned Parenthood

The suspected perpetrator of a Might 2023 assault on two aged pro-life activists has been discovered responsible of a number of expenses by a jury and faces the potential of many years in jail.

The American Heart for Regulation and Justice introduced that the jury in Maryland discovered 28-year-old Patrick Brice responsible of 4 expenses associated to the brutal assault of two aged pro-life activists outdoors a Deliberate Parenthood in Baltimore.

Brice was convicted on two counts of second-degree assault and two counts of reckless endangerment in reference to the beating of Mark Crosby and Dick Schaefer. 

Brice’s sentencing is scheduled to happen on March 20. He faces the prospect of 20 years in jail for the assault expenses, the authorized group mentioned.

Court docket information from the Baltimore Metropolis Circuit Court docket, the place the trial was held, point out that the jury didn’t attain a verdict on a cost of first-degree assault levied towards the defendant. 

The ACLJ has represented Crosby and Schaefer over the previous two years. The group first reported {that a} suspect was arrested in July 2024, greater than a yr after the assault passed off, however didn’t share his title publicly.

In an replace to its preliminary assertion in regards to the arrest of a suspect within the assault, the ACLJ recognized Brice as “a 27-year-old, 6’5”, 200lbs man who lives close to the Deliberate Parenthood.”

Video footage of the assault launched by the Baltimore Police Division in June 2023 exhibits the then-unknown suspect angrily wagging his finger at Schaefer earlier than tackling the aged man to the bottom and knocking over a potted plant within the course of. This assault prompted Crosby to intervene. 

Brice tackled Crosby to the bottom, punched and kicked him earlier than strolling away. A picture shared by Baltimore County Proper to Life exhibits Crosby with a bloody face and shirt and a severely swollen proper eye. 

The professional-life group reported Crosby, who required medical consideration after the assault, had the plate bone in his higher proper cheek “fully fractured” whereas the bones in his proper eye have been “fully shattered and should get replaced with steel.” 

In accordance with ACLJ, Schaefer had “cuts and scrapes throughout his physique, in addition to a lower on his hand that required particular bandaging,” whereas Crosby “sustained traumatic accidents to his head, together with a fractured bone in his face, blindness in a single eye, head and neck ache, two fractured fingers, and bruising on his legs and arms.”

The assault on Schaefer and Crosby passed off lower than a yr after the U.S. Supreme Court docket decided in Dobbs v. Jackson Ladies’s Well being Group that the U.S. Structure doesn’t include a proper to abortion. The 2022 ruling, which overturned the Roe v. Wade choice that legalized abortion nationwide, led to outrage amongst pro-abortion activists and resulted in a number of church buildings and pro-life being pregnant facilities going through various levels of arson and vandalism. 

Schaefer and Crosby weren’t the one pro-life activists assaulted within the months following the Dobbs choice.

As she campaigned on behalf of College students for Lifetime of America for a pro-life poll measure in Kansas that was finally defeated in 2022, 18-year-old activist Grace Hartsock was shoved and hit within the head by a girl who additionally shouted, “I hope you get raped” and “I hope you get hit by a automotive.” A 37-year-old lady was arrested and charged in reference to the incident.