Life Tabernacle Church Pastor Tony Spell
The Baton Rouge Advocate reports a Southern minister with ties to president Donald Trump has been hit with second degree battery charges and a $25k bond after marching across a four-lane highway to assault a neighbor’s kid.
“The Rev. Tony Spell stood on the steps of his church in Central on Wednesday — a day after being arrested for allegedly beating up his neighbor’s 20-year-old son — and defended his actions, comparing himself to a shepherd protecting his flock,” reports the Advocate.
Spell claims the neighbors across the street from his Life Tabernacle Church on Hooper Road, have been “terrorizing” him and his congregation for months. He even described the Sherwin family as “domestic terrorists,” although Central Police Chief Roger Corcoran said they have only received one complaint about the family, filed by the Spell’s wife, Shaye Spell. Corcoran said they investigated the claim but found nothing and closed it, reports the Advocate.
Just before the fistfight, the pastor claimed the 20-year-old man threatened to rape and kill his family from across the road. However, Scott Sherwin, the father of the 20-year-old, countered after the press conference that his son wouldn’t have said something like that, let alone loud enough for Spell to hear across four lanes of traffic.
“You know what I think? I should buy my son a megaphone because I know [Spell] didn’t hear across the highway,” Sherwin told the Advocate. He added that his son was in the front yard checking whether the grass was finally dry enough to mow, and had done nothing to provoke Spell.
But Spell claims the son was on the other side of Hooper Road, shouting obscenities. Spell’s arrest warrant claims the man yelled: “f—— you.”
Surveillance footage shows Spell running across the road, with the neighbor videoing him with a cellphone until the fight ensued. The Advocate reports video appears to show the neighbor throwing the first punch as Spell pounced, but then Spell punched the man eight times before tackling him to the ground, then hitting him another 27 times.
During the fight, Spell also threw the neighbor’s phone into the street. Between punches, while on top of him, Spell twisted the neighbor’s neck to the side. And after the punchout, Spell stood and delivered a kick to the man’s side before crossing back over the road and going into the church.
The Advocate reports Spell drew national attention in 2020 after refusing to shutter church services at Life Tabernacle, defying the Louisiana governor’s emergency orders restricting group events because of the COVID pandemic.
At the time, Spell said he had spoken with Tony Perkins, president of the evangelical Family Research Council and one of President Donald Trump’s religious advisers, and “he has been a big help for us,” offering encouragement.
Around that same time, Covid was spreading faster in Louisiana than “anywhere else in the world,” according to the LA Times, with 1,388 cases and 46 deaths.