Woman charged with hitting Elizabeth City protesters with car has history of making threats, online and off

Lisa Michelle O'Quinn, 41, of Elizabeth City, was charged with two felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and one count each of careless and reckless driving and unsafe movement. She was released on a $40,000 bond.

Marchers have demanded that authorities release video of the shooting recorded on the deputies' body-worn and dashboard cameras. To date, Brown's family has seen about 19 minutes of the more than two hours of video, and the public has seen only 44 seconds from different angles that District Attorney Andrew Womble showed during a news conference in which he cleared the deputies of any wrongdoing.

"We’ve been peaceful this whole time not getting answers, not getting anything, so no, I didn’t expect that. I really didn’t," Valerie Lindsey said Tuesday of getting hit by a car.

Videos of the incident show a group marching down Ehringhaus Street, with police cars blocking side streets. As a police car moved past Griffin Street to block another intersection, a white car pulls out into a cluster of about a half-dozen marchers.

Lindsey said the woman driving the car verbally antagonized the protesters first.

"She held out her fist and said, 'Justice served. Justice served,'" Lindsey said, suggesting that the driver thought Brown deserved to die.

When the car moved toward the protesters, the videos show they put their hands on the hood to stop it, but the driver kept going, striking Lindsey and Michelle Morris.

"Her front tire hit my leg and I fell, and her back tire ran over my ankle," Lindsey said, her lower right leg in a cast. "I wasn’t terrified. I was mad as hell. I was mad as hell."

Other protesters tried to stop the car and then angrily demanded that an Elizabeth City police officer stop it.

"I witnessed one protester get hit pretty violently," said Joshua Grooten, who was on his bike during the march.

"That’s when I tried to move in to stop the vehicle from hitting more protesters," Grooten said. "She hit my bike, hit my right leg."

Police eventually boxed the car in and arrested O'Quinn.

Elizabeth City police said they are investigating whether to classify the incident as a hate crime. O'Quinn is white, and the women hit by the car are Black.

O'Quinn has a long criminal history, including charges of communicating threats, ethnic intimidation and carrying concealed weapon in 2013 and assault by pointing a gun and communicating threats last year, as well as a history of making racist posts online.

"She called us n-words. She called us a bunch of Black troublemakers," Lindsey said.

"Someone that is extremely prejudiced ran that vehicle into innocent protesters," said Kerwin Pittman, a community organizer with the civil rights group Emancipate NC.

"She definitely had every opportunity to stop, and she definitely saw that people were in her way when she accelerated," Grooten said.

O'Quinn couldn't be reached for comment Tuesday, and her mother, who was with her in the car at the time, declined to comment when a WRAL News crew stopped at the family home.

Another protest march was set for Tuesday evening, and Lindsey said she was prepared to participate by riding in a golf cart and using crutches.

"The tone now is for protesters to be extra vigilant," Pittman said.