A man accused of ramming a truck into a Texas news station on Wednesday came with boxes full of conspiratorial scribblings.
Shortly after 6 a.m., Michael Fry repeatedly rammed his truck into the side of FOX 4, a news station Dallas, the station reported. Fry, 34, had packed his truck with printouts of an article about him, on which he’d written messages about “high treason, witchery by mob of female sheriff’s [sic]”. The incident prompted speculation that Fry had attempted to attack journalists, although police said Fry appears to be mentally ill. While police walked him into jail, Fry described what he claimed was a conspiracy to kill him. He faces criminal mischief charges for his attack on the FOX 4 building.
Fry drove his pickup truck back and forth into the FOX 4 building, shattering its windows, pictures from the scene reveal.
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Then Fry returned to his truck, where he unloaded boxes full of the printed article and started “throwing boxes into the street and then just grabbing handfuls of paper and throwing handfuls of paper into the street as well,” Brandon Todd, a FOX 4 reporter described to his own station.“Originally when he was in the bed of the truck he was yelling out ‘High treason! High treason!’ As he got over to the window he was trying to explain something that involved the Denton County Sheriff’s Department,” Todd said.
The papers, on which Fry had handwritten messages about “conspiracys thearys [sic] to commit capital muders [sic], pirating, profiteering,” were printouts of an article about a 2012 shooting he witnessed. A Denton County, Texas sheriff’s deputy claimed he had pulled over Fry and Roberto Hernandez for speeding, but when he ordered them out of the car, Hernandez allegedly tried to run over the deputy, who fired into the car, killing Hernandez. Fry was arrested for violating his probation from a previous driving while intoxicated conviction.
Fry has a history of convictions.
In 2003, he was arrested for alleged aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and later pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor count of assault resulting in bodily injury in the case, Texas court records show. In two separate cases the following year, he was convicted of trespass and burglary. He was convicted of criminal mischief in 2005 and 2007, theft in 2007 and 2011, and driving while intoxicated in 2012.
Police told Texas Monthly that the truck attack on FOX 4 did not appear to be a direct attack on journalists. Instead, Fry appeared interested in pushing a conspiracy theory about his arrests, claiming police were plotting against him and had conspired to murder him during the fatal shooting of Hernandez.
“They’ve committed high treason against me. They were trying to kill me and they missed and they killed Roberto Carlos Hernandez and ever since I’ve been running for my life,” he told a WFAA reporter as police walked him into the Dallas County Jail on Wednesday.
“I don’t know what to do. I’m not smart enough, I’m not powerful enough, I don’t have enough money, I’m mentally challenged, but I tried to do what I could to demand questions to be heard. I just wanted to summon the calvary and get the power of the people in the media to do their job. I just want to live, please don’t let them do this to me.”
