A Kentucky man charged with threatening Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Marty Pollio over the district’s mask mandate told WAVE-TV his comments were taken out of context.
Bradley Linzy went inside the district’s central office in Louisville on Monday and began arguing with staff about the mask requirement for unvaccinated students and staff, according to court documents. After leaving the building, school security officers found Linzy outside in his car, where he admitted to having a gun.
Linzy is accused of confronting Pollio as the superintendent was leaving the building, telling him, “Your life is f(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk) over and career as you know it," and, “You don’t know what I’m capable of doing.”
He told the television station that he was not threatening Pollio's life.
"I said, ‘Your life is over as it pertains to your career, sir.’ I said, ‘I have enough of a following that I could make this very difficult for you,’ etc. etc. kinda thing. I didn’t, I wasn’t threatening the man’s life or anything like that.”
Linzy has a YouTube channel with videos about guitars and other instruments, with more than 120,000 followers.
As for his other comment, “You don’t know what I am capable of," Linzy said he made it to the security officer when he was asked if he had any weapons.
“I was agreeing with him,” Linzy said. “He was like, ‘I have to ask. I’m just doing my job.’ And I was like, ‘I understand that.’ I said, ‘You don’t know what I’m capable of. I get it.’ That’s what that was about.”
Linzy said he went to the district office after calling multiple times to try to speak to someone about the schools' mask mandate. He said he is concerned for his 10-year-old daughter who is on the autism spectrum.
“With these mask mandates, and her being in a mask, and all of her peers being in a mask, it makes it doubly hard for her to understand people’s emotions,” he said.
Using his own child's autism as an excuse for this behavior and hiding behind it makes Brad Linzy a coward and a fool. He's not the person I'm worried about.
I'm worried about one of his 120,000 YouTube followers who decides that the next Jefferson County school board meeting or Louisville City Council meeting needs to be "disrupted" by an AR-15. Odds a really good the security at those meetings will deal with anything like that.
But if it's, say, a dozen "like-minded" individuals? Well, that gets dicey, fast.
Maybe nothing even approaching that happens here in Kentucky.
But maybe it does. And frankly, it wouldn't be difficult at all to start.
Where, when, and how it ends, well...
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