In September 2024, pro-Israel protester and Iraq War veteran Scott Hayes, 47, shot at a pro-Palestinian protester who charged across the street and tackled him to the ground in Newton, Massachusetts. The video went viral on social media at the time.
Hayes was arrested and charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and faces years in jail. His attacker was not charged.
Hayes met with The Jerusalem Post in Tel Aviv earlier this month to discuss the incident, which “upended my entire life” and led to him being fired.
“The incident happened on a Thursday evening. I was actually leaving our [pro-Israel protest] event that night to go home to do an online introduction to Judaism course. He [the attacker] was yelling at some of our women, and the situation just didn’t feel right,” Hayes began.
“I engaged with him a few times. He actually came across the street at me once before the video that’s been seen everywhere.”
“I placed my hand near my pistol, and I threw my other hand up, and I told him, ‘Stop, go back.’ He stopped, and he spat at me. He went back across the street and said, ‘You’re f***ing packing,’” referring to Hayes’s weapon.
“It had reached the point then that it had escalated, and I thought, ‘Time to call the police.’”
At this point, Hayes reached for his phone, took a step back from the street, and dialed 911. He said that the police actually have a 53-second recording of the incident from his phone.
“[The attacker] saw that as his opportunity to attack when I was distracted,” Hayes said. “He hit me, and my phone actually fell out of my hand.”
“When he came across me, my head hit the concrete. If I had been knocked out, he would have killed me; he would have killed my friends. I feared for my life. He tackled me, and my head hit the ground. He was trying to choke me and trying to get my firearm.”
After he had fired his gun, Hayes pushed it away and told someone to get it.
“You hear me telling somebody to grab my pistol,” Hayes said. He then proceeded to give the man first aid, keeping him alive until the police came.
“Even as I was giving first aid, he was still talking s*** about Palestine and Israel.”
Hayes had to have surgery in November to repair a disc in his neck.
DESPITE NUMEROUS videos and witness statements from the scene, including from the shop across the street, Hayes was arrested and charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. He had a GPS bracelet for a month following the incident and faces a trial on June 18.
The charge against Hayes remains the same despite his acting in self-defense. “It’s a very different legal system than I spent 47 years thinking it was,” he said.
Hayes explained that in Massachusetts, citizens have the duty to retreat. “So before you use any force in return, you have to exhaust all avenues of retreat.
“If retreat is not possible, you have the proportionality aspect,” continued Hayes. “Was the self-defense proportional to what’s happening to you?”
Massachusetts’s duty to retreat states that if you are attacked, you must try to retreat if you can do so in complete safety before resorting to deadly force (for example, shooting or stabbing).
However, you can normally use reasonable non-deadly force to defend yourself without retreating.
It derives from case law, Commonwealth v. Shaffer, 367 Mass. 508 (1975), and has been reaffirmed since then.
The attacker himself is not going to trial. According to Hayes, as a first-time offender in the state with no prior record, they tend to “waive it.”
“If he stays out of trouble for X amount of time, the charges go,” he said.
“They waited 103 days to actually charge him with assault and battery, which is a misdemeanor crime in Massachusetts,” as opposed to Hayes’ charge, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, which could put him in jail for two and a half years on a felony conviction.
Nevertheless, Hayes told the Post he “100% believes” he has a winnable case if it goes to trial.
Massachusetts: A Pro Hamas supporter attacked pro-Israeli protesters in the city of Newton and was shot in the stomach by the person he attacked, a former US military veteran who fought in Iraq. pic.twitter.com/6vtnmQsftW
— Breaking News (@TheNewsTrending) September 13, 2024
“I believe that I followed the rule of law in all aspects. I legally owned my firearm. I knew the laws, I wasn’t breaking the laws. I don’t go around breaking laws. It shocks me still to this day that it’s at this point, when there’s so much evidence to prove my case.”
THE POST asked the key question: Did Hayes feel that the outcome would have been different if he were pro-Palestinian?
“I do think, politically, there is a bias against being pro-Israel,” he said. He spoke about incidents of minimal punishment for pro-Palestinian protesters. “I had my phone slapped out of my hand, I’ve been bumped, I’ve been pushed. They push the limits of what’s legal.”
In the last two years, there has seemingly been only one instance of a pro-Palestinian protester being sentenced in the state. Most cases were resolved through diversion programs, with others still pending in court.
In the only reported criminal example, Northeastern University student Kyler Shinkle-Stolar was arrested during a pro-Palestinian protest and arraigned in Boston Municipal Court’s Roxbury Division on a criminal trespassing charge.
The judge dismissed the charge and instead ordered 20 hours of community service.
In addition to the pro-Israel aspect, Hayes explained that the state of Massachusetts is a “very anti-gun state, anti-Second Amendment,” which he believes also had an impact.
“I can honestly say that if this happened in Florida, Texas, or other states that have stand-your-ground laws, I probably would have been detained by the police, not arrested, and it definitely wouldn’t have reached the level that did happen.”
The Post asked Hayes whether the ordeal had affected his desire to be involved in pro-Israel advocacy, to which he strongly said no: “Standing with the Jewish people and the people of Israel is the hill I’ll die on.”