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A 28-year-old leader of a Black Lives Matter protest who was charged with assault after police said he punched a man in the face at a Seaside Heights Boardwalk was simply protecting himself -- and never punched anyone, he said.
Jamaal Holmes of Toms River was marching on Saturday with approximately 25 other protestors when an unidentified 68-year-old man demanded he take off his Guy Fawkes mask -- then reached over and tried ripping it off, Holes told the Asbury Park Press.
Holmes got the audio in a recording taken on his iPhone, which at the end show the man lying on the boardwalk.
Seaside Heights Police Department Detective Steve Korman said the man fell to the ground due to the impact of Holmes' facial punch during an argument on the boardwalk at Sherman Avenue, leaving him with a small cut on the back of his head.
Holmes alleges police arrested him instead of the man, refused to hear his side of the story and then taunted him while being processed at police headquarters, the outlet said.
Boaz Matlack of Medford told the APP he witnessed the altercation and that Holmes was not the aggressor.
Rather, Matlack said, the other man struck Holmes in the face twice before Holmes pushed him, causing him to fall over onto his own bike.
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