After two Ku Klux Klan members confronted LGBTQ supporters with violent threats and handguns at a protest in Corbin, Ky. earlier this month, police took their bullets but not their guns — and did not arrest the card-carrying klansmen.
The reason, according to a Corbin police Detective Robbie Hodge: Police officers could not press charges because they didn’t witness the entire incident firsthand.
Hodge told Raw Story he contacted the FBI “to make sure we didn’t miss anything,” and the federal agency “concurred there wasn’t any charges.”
But Timothy Beam, chief division counsel at the FBI’s Louisville office, said in an email to Raw Story that the FBI “would not take a position on whether state law has been violated,” adding that “Corbin PD or the local commonwealth attorney would be in a better position to make that determination.
While acknowledging the incident, Katie Anderson, spokesperson for the FBI’s Louisville office, declined to confirm or deny that the agency is investigating.
Multiple phone calls to Whitley County Attorney Robert Hammons seeking comment went unreturned.
Corbin is a municipality that straddles three counties, but Sanders Park, where the June 3 incident took place, is in Whitley County.
Trent Osborne, one of the protest organizers, told Raw Story that officers offered to help one of the LGBTQ supporters to file a restraining order against the KKK members.
“A restraining order doesn’t do much if the police are protecting the people who are doing the threatening,” he said. “The biggest issue is that these people have not been charged and are still walking free and making threats.”
Under the Kentucky statute for harassment, it’s a crime to “make an offensively coarse utterance, gesture or display” or address “abusive language” to others “with the intent to intimidate, harass, annoy or alarm.”
Kentucky also has laws on the books against menacing, a misdemeanor that applies when someone “intentionally places another person in reasonable apprehension of imminent physical injury,” and wanton endangerment.
Another law that might potentially apply is wanton endangerment. In the second degree, a misdemeanor offense, wanton endangerment is defined as “wantonly” engaging “in conduct which creates a substantial danger of physical injury to another person.” A first-degree violation, when the offender acts “under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life,” raises the offense to a Class D felony.
RELATED ARTICLE: KKK members pulled guns on pro-LGBTQ protesters — but Kentucky officers let them go free: police docs
Osborne said that even before the Corbin police referred the matter to the FBI, he reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky, and spoke with Assistant U.S. Attorney Zach Dembo, whose LinkedIn profile describes him as a “civil rights prosecutor.”
Prior to his assignment to the Eastern District, Dembo worked as a legislative director and policy adviser to Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democratic, and before that worked in the civil rights division at the U.S Department of Justice under President Trump.
Gabrielle Dudgeon, a spokesperson, confirmed that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky is aware of the incident.
“I can’t talk about anything that is ongoing or even if it’s a potential investigation,” she told Raw Story. “If there’s a civil rights allegation, we definitely want people to report it, and we want those reports to go through the local police department. If they’re uncomfortable with their local law enforcement, they can report it to the FBI.”
AJay Anderson, one of the organizers, filmed the confrontation, which took place at a public park in Corbin, a small Appalachian city in southeastern Kentucky, on June 3 as a small group of LGBTQ activists protested pending anti-trans legislation in the state General Assembly.
Two men drove up to the rally and began harassing the LGBTQ activists. As previously reported by Raw Story, the men displayed KKK cards, made violent threats, yelled homophobic slurs, and one of them waved a handgun — all captured on Anderson’s video.
In the video, one of the self-identified KKK members named Clayton Segebart can be seen arguing with James Hensley, an LGBTQ supporter, as others chant, “Gay rights, human rights.”
Kenneth W. Hutton, a former Corbin public works employee who is standing to Segebart’s right, can be seen pulling a card out of his wallet and handing it to Segebart.
After looking at the card, Segebart turns towards Hensley and says, “I want to rip your f---ing face off and shove it up your f---ing ass.” At that time, Osborne and Hensley can be heard audibly commenting that Segebart is holding a “a KKK card.” The video shows Segebart thrust the card in the Hensley’s face, and Hensley swipes his arm away.
Hensley told Raw Story that Segebart touched his face with his hand when he held out the card, although the video doesn’t show it. After Hensley tried to swipe Segebart's hand away, the video shows Segebart take a swing at Hensley.
"When he tried to swing at me, I'll be honest, I was ready to tear his head off," Hensley told Raw Story. "My brain kind of saved me in that because I would have been shot."
After the brief altercation, Segebart can be seen reaching for his waist, and Hensley says, “He pulled out a f---ing gun on me. Call the cops.”
“I’m pretty sure I know why he came there,” Hensley told Raw Story. “He wanted to provoke us so he can legally shoot us. I know it sounds outlandish, but that’s really what I think he was trying to do.”
The video shows the men continue to argue and trade accusations of assault until another man, who remains unidentified, approaches and can be heard saying, “Get along somewhere. We ain’t trying to hear all this s---. Go on.”
“You take care of these f------, then,” Segebart responds.
Continuing to approach, the unidentified man informs Segebart that his brother is gay.
“I don’t care,” Segebart says, unholstering his firearm and waving it in the man’s direction.
Moments later, when the police arrive, an officer can be heard calmly saying: “Take the gun off.”
Segebart held up the firearm and placed it on the ground. The police took guns from Segebart and Hutton, emptied the bullets, and then returned the weapons to the men.
Referencing the specific moment when Segebart brandished his firearm, Detective Hodge told Raw Story that Segebart “didn’t pull it on the guys on the protest,” implying that the act was directed against the unidentified man who had appeared on the scene, while adding that he came from a yard sale across the street.
Hodge said the man left the scene without giving a statement to the police.
But Osborne said the distinction doesn’t make sense as a rationale for not charging Segebart.
“These are people who had already threatened us,” he told Raw Story. “Regardless of who the gun is waved at, it shouldn’t matter. He was still yelling homophobic slurs. The original Klan is a terroristic organization, and he’s openly associating himself with it. In Corbin, we have a long history of racism. Even going back to the 1990s, there was a documentary about how Corbin was known as a ‘sundown town.’”
Segebart and Hutton could not be reached for comment for this story.
While local and federal law enforcement have been slow to act, Osborne and his fellow LGBTQ organizers in Corbin have continued to receive threats as they plan for a “Human Rights Peaceful Protest & March” through downtown Corbin on Saturday.
Osborne said he and other organizers have received messages on Facebook from strangers telling them they know where they live and work. While the accounts are anonymous, they display their affiliation with photos of Klan paraphernalia.
And Osborne said his neighbors have told him: “You do not mess with these people. They will burn you out of house and home.”
One local contact who delivers portable toilets told Osborne that he made a delivery to Hutton in neighboring Laurel County in the 2000s, and Hutton acknowledged to him that it was for a Klan gathering. Meanwhile, the Klan members who have been harassing the organizers online are openly talking about mobilizing people from out of state to come to Corbin to counter-protest this weekend.
Most alarming, a man identifying himself as Jeffrey Mhaghnuis posted a comment on Facebook in response to Anderson’s efforts to identify the Klan members instructing others to swab LGBTQ activists’ car door handles with fentanyl.
The Facebook profile associated with “Mhaghnuis” told Raw Story he did not write the comment about swabbing fentanyl on car door handles, adding, “It is probably photoshopped.”
“If we don’t back down, people I care about will be killed, frankly,” Osborne told Raw Story. “It’s scary. It’s a conversation I’ve had with loved ones. I told them that if something happens to me during this process, I want everyone to know I stand by the stuff I’ve said. I wanted them to know I got killed — if I died from fentanyl — that was these people. Don’t let them lie; these people caused this.”
Osborne told Raw Story that regardless of whether his neighbors support the LGBTQ community, they should recognize the danger posed by the Klan, noting that a stray bullet from the park could have hit someone at the yard sale across the street on June 3.
“People should be genuinely worried about that — KKK people talking about coming to your town,” Osborne said. “People need to realize that Corbin is every town. People need to stand together. It’s not right. These people are dangerous to everyone.”
