The woman accused of driving her car past barricades and through the Main Street Festival in Laurel, Maryland, on Saturday will remain behind bars for now.
Kai Deberry-Bostick, 28, is facing several charges after she drove through Main Street Festival despite police officers telling her to stop.
In court documents, police claim Deberry-Bostick drove up to two traffic barrels connected with police tape at an apartment complex and told a Laurel Police Department officer she needed to go and wanted to move the barrels.
On body camera footage, Bostick can be seen taking down the police tape and arguing with the officer who is telling her she cannot leave the parking lot.
“I got to go to work, what do you want me to do,” Deberry-Bostick can be heard saying.
In the charging documents, the officer said he stood in front of the car with his hands on the hood as “he feared for the safety and well-being of the several hundred festival attendees that were actively in the roadway on Main Street.”
The body camera footage shows the car moving toward the officer, and the officer said Deberry-Bostick tapped him with her car and used it to push him out of her way.
Stated in the court documents and seen in body camera footage, Deberry-Bostick can be seen driving through attendees. She could be heard saying “excuse me” as people moved out of her way. Attendees and others could be heard yelling at Deberry-Bostick to stop.
No one was injured in the incident.
She can be seen closing her driver’s side door as she drove off, the officer claims he opened it “in an attempt to extract her from the vehicle,” but it didn’t work. The officer followed the car on foot, telling her to stop.
According to court documents, her escape was thwarted by vendors and fire trucks that were in her path. Laurel firefighters also stood in front of her car, demanding she stop.
Deberry-Bostick is accused of trying to resist arrest by getting into the car’s passenger seat, trying to prevent being handcuffed and trying to escape as officers walked her through the festival to an area where she could be loaded into a vehicle that would take her to the police station.
Court documents claim she told officers her “circumstances” and didn’t intend to hit anyone.
“I don’t see what I did wrong,” she said, according to court documents.
“I just think we’re pretty blessed,” Laurel Police Chief Russ Hamill told WTOP about what took place. “It was just a complete disregard for the welfare of other people, and thankfully, she doesn’t strike anybody before she gets stopped up at the next block.”
The chief said the officer did “what he needed to do” to effectively stop Deberry-Bostick and, throughout, did everything he could do to de-escalate the situation.
Hamill said he has seen some online criticisms of the officer and the department for not doing more, and he said while they always look at what could have been done better, this was a chaotic situation that escalated quickly.
“It’s easy to ‘Monday morning quarterback,’ and I’ve seen some posts online where people are like, ‘I would have done this. I would have done that.’ Those people weren’t there. They didn’t place themselves in danger. The officer took the actions we expect them to take,” he said.
Hamill said there is only one person responsible for “the danger” that he said was created that day, and it’s Deberry-Bostick.
She’s facing a long list of charges, among them assault on an officer, resisting arrest, disturbing the peace and failing to obey law enforcement.
She has a trial scheduled for July 18.
WTOP’s Nick Iannelli contributed to this report.
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