A Florida Trump supporter will go to prison for shooting at jet skiers for flying a Biden flag on Nov. 3, 2020.
That was election day, feelings were running high, and Eduardo Acosta, 37, was jet skiing with friends in Biscayne Bay near Miami when he spotted the flag on another jet ski.
“Triggered by the flag, prosecutors said, Acosta began to argue with the men, claiming that anyone who supported Biden was a ‘child molester’ — a trope common among believers of the QAnon conspiracy theory,” Raw Story said here (based on Miami Herald reporting). Acosta “tried to charge” the men, but was restrained by other members of his group, Raw Story said.
He later returned with a shotgun “and shot at Peralta and Garcia, who fled on their watercraft and then fell off into the ocean,” prosecutors said. Acosta then “caught up with them and threatened to kill them” if they returned to the area.
A jury convicted Acosta of attempted murder, aggravated assault with a firearm, and armed robbery on Thursday, November 3, 2022. He faces “up to life in prison, with a mandatory minimum of at least 20 years” at his sentencing on December 16, 2022.
The guilty verdict against this crazed Trumper came just days after another rightwinger driven mad by nutty conspiracy theories broke into Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home and nearly killed her husband, and only days before the 2022 elections, against the backdrop of a rising tide of rightwing threats of violence — and a flood of guilty pleas and convictions of the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters who tried to prevent formal certification of Biden’s election win.
Trump supporters who, egged on by conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric, have committed acts of political violence are personally paying a steep price for their actions — and nobody has their back. That gives Acosta something to think about while sitting 20 years in a steel cage, and other impulsive individuals should think about what happened to him.
Related story: Police and the FBI are investigating a bullet that shattered a laundry room window at the home of a North Carolina GOP candidate’s parents (see story here). A suspect hasn’t been apprehended, so it’s unknown whether the shooting was politically motivated, as portrayed by conservative media (see, e.g., story here), or just a stray round from a nearby wooded area. The candidate, a gun manufacturer, says he’s received threats.