Authorities on Thursday detained Parkland father Manuel Oliver, who was attending a committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on gun regulation, according to U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, who shared footage of the encounter on Twitter.
Oliver, whose son Joaquin was shot and killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High mass shooting five years ago, spoke out and was accused of interrupting a committee hearing held by the House Judiciary Committee, called “ATF’s Assault on the Second Amendment: When is Enough Enough?” according to video of the hearing.
“You took my son away from me,” Oliver’s wife, Patricia Padauy-Oliver, said at one point in the meeting.
Committee chairman Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, ordered the Olivers to be removed “for breaching protocol” and ‘disordering the committee room.” As the two were removed, officers detained Manuel Oliver.
Video of the encounter posted on social media showed two officers held Oliver down on the floor while his wife told them to “let my husband go.”
Patricia Padauy-Oliver stood over the officers, arguing over the arrest as her husband was pinned to the floor.
One of the officers who pinned Oliver to the ground turned toward Patricia Padauy-Oliver, pointed a finger at her and shouted, “Back up, or you’re going to jail next!” one video showed. The second officer appeared to shove her.
Oliver said later in a tweet that his arrest “is totally irrelevant.”
“What really offends us is the fact that chairman @FallonForTexas allowed lie after lie in order to protect the gun industry’s ambitious strategy. Our son Joaquin still has a voice and he will use it whenever is needed,” Oliver wrote in the tweet.
Patricia Padauy-Oliver in her own tweet shared a video of an officer escorting her from the committee room as she shouted at the lawmakers.
“I am not scared to speak up for what I believe in,” she wrote. “WE NEED TO HOLD LAWMAKERS ACCOUNTABLE AND MAKE THEM SPEAK THE TRUTH. ?@manueloliver00 and I are doing what is right!”
“The Chair should’ve given a warning. He completely escalated the situation,” Frost said in a tweet.
The Olivers have fought to curb gun violence. Manuel Oliver was detained after climbing a crane outside of the White House to urge President Joe Biden to fix the gun violence problem in America on Feb. 14, 2022, four years to the day since a former student murdered his son and 16 others at the Parkland school.
According to Oliver, he had asked for a meeting with the president, but hadn’t gotten a yes, so he set out to get the president’s attention to address the issue.
A few months later, Oliver was invited to the White House in July to be present for an event honoring a law aimed at preventing gun violence. Oliver shouted objections while the president was giving the speech, urging that more needed to be done, beyond a new law aimed toward reducing gun violence.
