A New York City mother-of-three who plowed her 2020 BMW into a group of BLM protesters has again turned down a plea deal in favor of a jury trial.
Kathleen Casillo, 54, appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court Tuesday, nearly two years after she was charged with driving into pedestrians during the protest at the intersection of 39th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan on December 11, 2020.
Casillo could face seven years in prison after turning down the deal, which included six hours of community service and a year of license suspension.
Casillo and her attorney told the court they had no interest in the pleading and would opt for a jury trial. They turned down the same plea deal a year ago.
Howard Beach’s Queens mother has previously claimed protesters came to her car and called her “a privilege white bitch” before hitting the vehicle.
She said she then panicked and hit the gas as they attempted to open the doors of their vehicle, resulting in nine activists being injured.
Kathleen Casillo, 54, appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday, nearly two years after she was charged with driving into pedestrians during the December 2020 NYC protest
Casillo could face seven years in prison after turning down the deal, which included six hours of community service and a year’s suspension of his license in favor of a jury trial
Casillo was issued no more than a desk ticket for the incident and was released just hours after her arrest. She is pictured at her hearing in November 2022
In an exclusive interview with last year, the mother said she feared for her daughter’s life when a group of protesters began attacking her car and decided to step on the gas, eventually crashing into a group of activists in 2020 .
Casillo was issued no more than a desk ticket for the incident and was released just hours after her arrest. Her 29-year-old daughter was also in the car at the time but was not charged. Casillo was later charged with reckless assault.
“My side of the story was that we were attacked by people who wanted to break my daughter’s window and drag her out of the car, I was afraid [for] my life,” Casillo, whose husband works as an auto mechanic, told last year.
Casillo said she turned down the plea deal in December because she did nothing wrong, saying “I’m going to court to clear my name because I’m not guilty.”
“I’m sick,” she continued, noting, “I never intended to hurt anyone. I feared for my daughter’s life more than anyone. I thought they were pulling her out of the car.
“They just make the black community look like they’re thugs. One of my closest friends has been a woman of color since I was 19, so it’s not a black and white thing. I don’t even know the skin color of the people I’ve met. It was all mixed up.’
Casillo’s BMW had been plowed through a crowd of about 50 people, leaving several injured
Video posted to social media showed the moment she plowed through a group of 50 Black Lives Matter protesters that night.
Photos of the incident clearly show the damage to the black 2019 BMW sedan.
Several injured protesters were taken to Bellevue Hospital for treatment of their injuries.
Since then, police have been forced to guard Casillo’s home because of death threats to her and her family, her daughter Dominique said.
When Casillo appeared before Manhattan Criminal Court last year, security officers had to escort her into the building when a group of protesters compared her to a female Kyle Rittenhouse.
Rittenhouse claimed to have been defending himself when he shot three people, two fatally, at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020.
He was later acquitted of all charges in a criminal trial that divided the nation over gun rights issues, violence at racial justice protests and vigilantism.
Kathleen Casillo, center, was denied the same plea deal in December 2021. She is pictured by security officers entering Manhattan Criminal Court last year
Protesters outside the courthouse in December compared Casillo to Kyle Rittenhouse, who claimed self-defense when he shot three people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Wisconsin
Dominique described Thursday to how he was attacked in 2020: “You know when you picture a protest, you picture a crowd [people] to protest against something. We didn’t see that.’
She said what she experienced that day was a “traumatizing situation” and said she and her mother were “driving down an empty road” when “a few people came out of nowhere.”
“It didn’t look like a protest,” said Dominique. “It was more like being attacked by random people being threatened.”
She claimed that the people who attacked the car “weren’t really part of the protest” as the actual protest “was a block.
“They just lingered and drove out of nowhere before we stopped the car,” Dominique said. “We waited and watched the traffic light turn green [then] red.
“We waited a long time and they were just there and doing nothing.
“Then they walked away a bit so we could move,” she claims. “We started driving and they started attacking the car. So of course we stopped again and that’s when they started hitting [the] Car, damn us. I was honestly really scared.
“Eventually there was a part that actually banged open the window on my side, and that’s when my mom started rolling,” Dominique said. “We said we have to get out of here because they won’t stop.
“There was no other car around,” she continued. “There might have been cars behind us, but we were the first car down an empty sidewalk, so it was just like ‘wrong place, wrong time’? I do not know.’
She noted that it was “sad because I definitely think there’s some bad threats that ruin the protest because there were people protesting for a cause and they were just looking for trouble.”
Casillo, 53, right, said she panicked when a group of protesters started banging on her car. She is pictured here with her daughter Dominique, 29, who was in the vehicle at the time
In the aftermath, Dominique said her mother was called a racist on Twitter, calling it “really traumatizing.”
People took to social media to post screenshots of their Facebook and Instagram accounts, The City reported at the time, featuring posts supporting then-President Donald Trump’s handling of the COVID pandemic and liking a group called “I stood with Rudy Giuliani.
But Casillo has denied claims of racism, telling in December: “One of my closest friends has been a woman of color since I was 19, so it’s not a black and white thing.
“I don’t even know the color of the people I’ve met,” she continued. “It was all mixed.”
Her lawyers have dismissed claims that Casillo was racist and intentionally beat protesters, calling it “false narrative” that was “unfounded and deeply troubling” and hope she gets a fair trial.
They also noted that Casillo had no criminal history and “has no history of hurting anyone,” claiming “her heart goes out to the victims.”
Casillo was arrested after plowing her car through the ICE demonstration in December 2020
Casillo claimed protesters came to her car and called her “a privilege white bitch” before hitting the vehicle. Damage to the car is clearly visible in this snapshot