Olympia protest nets 7th arrest

By Jeremy Pawloski | The Olympian • Published May 29, 2008

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OLYMPIA – An Olympia police officer arrested a student of The Evergreen State College on Wednesday, saying he remembered the man spitting on him during demonstrations May 1, court papers state.

The Olympian

Amended charges have been filed against some of the people charged in connection with the May Day demonstration in downtown Olympia.

• Bryan A. Riggins, 20, is charged with first-degree malicious mischief, a class B felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine. He also is charged with riot and reckless endangerment, both gross misdemeanors, and resisting arrest, a misdemeanor.

• Forest A. Student, 20, is charged with second-degree theft, a class C felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. He also is charged with riot, a gross misdemeanor.

• Daniel Kyle Wilson, 20, is charged with riot, a class C felony, two counts of first-degree malicious mischief, a class B felony, and reckless endangerment, a gross misdemeanor.

• Daniel Busby, 20, is charged with second-degree theft, a class C felony, and riot, a gross misdemeanor.

• Randall Hunt, 23, is charged with first-degree malicious mischief, a class B felony, along with riot and reckless endangerment, both gross misdemeanors.

• Stephanie Gottschalk, 19, is charged with third-degree assault.

Thurston County Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney David Bruneau has filed a motion to jointly try Riggins, Student, Wilson, Busby, Hunt and Gottschalk, alleging that "the allegations are part of a common scheme or plan and/or were closely connected in respect to time, place and occasion."

A Thurston County Superior Court judge found probable cause to support the arrest of Shyam Khanna, 19, on suspicion of third-degree assault and riot. Judge Richard Strophy ordered that Khanna be released from the Thurston County Jail on his recognizance, meaning that he did not have to post bail.

Khanna is the seventh person arrested on suspicion of criminal charges stemming from the May Day demonstrations in downtown Olympia to promote workers' and immigrants' rights. During the demonstrations, a group of rock-throwing participants smashed windows at two downtown banks.

When police tried to intervene, other demonstrators attempted to block them from making arrests, an Olympia police spokesman has said.

Arrested downtown

Khanna was one of those intervening demonstrators, according to the probable-cause certificate in support of his arrest, and Olympia police officer Michael O'Neill arrested him Wednesday after recognizing him on the street downtown.

"When Khanna, among others, was moved back to the sidewalk, he spat upon O'Neill," the probable-cause statement says.

"Khanna continued to return to the street, yelling profanities such as '(expletive) the police ... take back the streets,' in an apparent attempt to gain support from fellow travelers," the affidavit says.

After Khanna spat on the officer, he "then fled into the crowd and was seen to remove his 'fisherman's' hat and replace it with a baseball hat given to him by another protester, and managed to disappear into the mob," the affidavit says.

Khanna is identified in court papers as a sophomore at Evergreen. In a separate case, Khanna faces misdemeanor citations out of Olympia Municipal Court for pedestrian interference and resisting arrest during the November protests at the Port of Olympia.

Khanna is a member of Students for a Democratic Society, a suspended student group at Evergreen that has been occupying an administration building hallway as part of a "sit-in" protest demanding that the group be reinstated. That group's protest continued into its ninth day Thursday.

Khanna could not be reached for comment Thursday night.