You may recall earlier this week that a man approached and eventually got in the face of MSNBC correspondent Shaq Brewster during his live report on the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.
The man could be heard shouting at Brewster to “report accurately,” right before the correspondent was forced to end his report and toss it back to Craig Melvin in the studio.
Well, the Gulfport Police Department is saying that this suspect is Benjamin Eugene Dagley. It now has a warrant out for his arrest and says that he faces two counts of simple assault, one count of disturbing the peace and one count of violating an emergency curfew.
It might not surprise you to find that this man has a criminal past and is on probation. In fact, Gulfport police contacted the Cuyahoga County Adult Probation Department in Ohio because Dagley may have violated the terms of that probation. One of those terms, apparently, is not being allowed to travel.
NBC News performed some additional research on the man who harassed their colleague and found that Dagley “once pleaded guilty to vandalism, inducing panic and attempted assault.” The NBCNews.com story also cites a Cleveland.com story, which notes that Dagley was previously arrested on suspicion of drilling holes into tanks of dangerous chemicals in 2017.
According to NBC News, it wasn’t immediately clear why Dagley was in Gulfport, Miss., roughly 1,000 miles south of his home in Wooster, Ohio, and in the middle of a major hurricane.