Ravenna man held on weapons charges after No Kings rally incident

A 20-year-old Ravenna man was arrested and charged with carrying a concealed weapon and receiving stolen property at the No Kings rally on Oct. 18 in Kent after a scuffle broke out over the Trump flag he was carrying, police said.

The incident became a local flashpoint of the weekend protest in which an estimated 2,000 people lined the streets of downtown Kent and Ravenna to voice disapproval of the Trump administration.

Witnesses said Bryce Sobodosh was carrying a gun in his waistband. Police later identified the .40-caliber Smith and Wesson as stolen. Sobodosh said the gun was not his, according to a Kent Police Department incident report.

Sobodosh told police he was walking through the crowd with a flag supporting the president when a woman grabbed the flag. Interviewed by police, the woman said she grabbed a corner of the flag and began walking away in the opposite direction, still holding the flag. 

“She advised she knew she should not have grabbed the flag but stated she did not intend to take it just hold it,” wrote the officer who interviewed her.

Other witnesses told police they then saw Sobodosh push the woman in the back. For many of the bystanders, this was the first thing they saw. And some decided to intervene.

Jeff Clapper, a member of Kent City Council representing Ward 6, said he arrived at the No Kings rally shortly before 2:30 p.m. and saw a man shoving a woman. He tackled Sobodosh and restrained him on the ground with the help of a few other men. In the scuffle, the gun tumbled onto the sidewalk.

“Literally, as I was arriving, I saw that guy shove a girl in the back. I don’t know what the context was, I just saw him shove her in the back, and that’s not OK,” Clapper told The Portager. “I took the guy down and figured I’d hold him there until police came. He fought me to the ground, but I wasn’t going to let him get up. Then I found out he had a gun on him, so I just held his arms and pinned his head down while somebody got the gun off him, and we held him until the police arrived.”

When Andrew King from Ravenna walked by the altercation, he noticed the gun lying on the ground, so he picked it up, took the magazine out and made sure there wasn’t a round in the chamber. Then he put it on the window frame of the Zephyr Pub. When police arrived, King showed it to an officer, who took it into evidence.

Some witness accounts described the lead-up to the altercation slightly differently. Sobodosh said the woman took the flag from him, which she denied. Another person said he saw Sobodosh “waving the flag side to side aggressively, and at one point the pole hit him” when the man tried to yank it back from the woman.

Another witness told police he saw Sobodosh push the woman “in the center of her back between her shoulder blades.” The officer’s report continued: “Some parties on scene said [the woman] was punched, but [the witness] specifically said Bryce just pushed her back in an effort to get his flag back. It was at this point someone announced that Bryce had a gun in his waistband.”

The first officer who arrived at the scene briefly pointed his gun at Sobodosh’s back while he was prone on the pavement, according to video footage of the incident and the police report. He holstered the weapon as soon as Sobodosh offered his hands behind his back for handcuffs. The police department’s use of force review determined it “was reasonable and within KPD policy.”

After Sobodosh was arrested, dispatchers confirmed to the officers on scene that the gun witnesses said Sobodosh was carrying had been reported stolen in the Law Enforcement Automated Data System (LEADS).

The officer who interviewed Sobodosh reported that “Bryce stated he didn’t know where the gun came from and it wasn’t his.”

There were no charges related to the fight itself, police said, because both parties were disorderly and because there was no direct assault.