Man arrested for pulling gun on teen protesters, calling them the N-word

Elise Solé
Mark Allen Bartlett of Florida was arrested for carrying a concealed firearm after pulling a gun on teens and using the N-word. (Twitter/Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center)
Mark Allen Bartlett of Florida was arrested for carrying a concealed firearm after pulling a gun on teens and using the N-word. (Twitter/Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center)

A man who waved a gun at a group of kids attending an antiviolence event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day smiled for his police mugshot.

On Monday, the Florida-based civil-rights group Dream Defenders recorded a chaotic traffic jam on the streets of Miami at the annual “Bikes Up Guns Down” anti-violence event. According to CBS Miami, the influx of ATVs and bicycles impeding traffic has been concerning law enforcement, and dozens of arrests were made over the weekend.

A mother said that teen protesters (ages 18, 16, 15, 13 and 11) on bikes were preventing her from picking up her children. Pushing them away, she yelled to a man in a black shirt, “Don’t touch me!” and to one wearing red, “You just ran over me! You just ran over my foot with your tire! Don’t touch me, you bunch of thugs!”

“F***ing white a**,” someone yelled back.

A man named Mark Allen Bartlett, 52, emerged from a black Range Rover, carrying a black Springfield XT9 handgun. “Who did it?” Bartlett asked the woman. She identified the youth in the red shirt.

“Get the f*** out of here, you f***ing piece of sh**,” said Bartlett. “You f***ing losers. You f***ing stupid [N-word]. F***ing dumba** f***ing [N-word].” Bartlett yelled the N-word again before getting back into his car.

Dream Defenders filmed another scene, allegedly before the gun incident, while the same woman said that the group was blocking the streets. “You’re going to go to jail for it,” she addressed one of the protesters. “This is not saving your cause. Will you move your bike? You’re blocking this person.

“I have kids I need to pick up,” she said. “Please, sir.”

A last video is of Bartlett engaging in a screaming match with a protester holding a sign that reads, “Preserve affordable housing.”

Bartlett yelled, “Get in front of my car, you f***ing piece of s***. F***ing [N-word],” then used the N-word again, causing a female driver to scold Bartlett for being “a grown man” and “arguing with a child.”

The Miami Police Department sent Yahoo Lifestyle an arrest affidavit for Bartlett, who was pulled over on Biscayne Boulevard and admitted to officers that he had a firearm in his car but did not possess a valid Florida conceal-carry permit. “I did not know I had to have one,” Bartlett told police. While in handcuffs, Bartlett said, “Why am I being arrested when those kids are free to ride around? I did pull out my gun but I never pointed it at them.”

According to Click on Detroit, Bartlett’s bail was set at $5,000.

Dwight Wells, a mentor for the teens, challenged the woman’s claim that the teens touched her foot. “It was a peaceful demonstration, and what happened was ludicrous,” Wells tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “The kids were too upset to go to school today.”

Yahoo Lifestyle reached out to the woman in the video, whose identity has not been officially confirmed, but she did not return an interview request.

A representative of Dream Defenders sent a press release to Yahoo Lifestyle announcing that the teens involved will hold a Tuesday news conference to answer media questions.

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