St. Louis mayor won’t quit, office says, after ‘RESIGN LYDA RESIGN’ painted near City Hall
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Lyda Krewson, the embattled mayor of St. Louis -- who has faced repeated protests over the past two weeks -- won’t be stepping down anytime soon, her spokesman said Friday.
Communication Director Jacob Long issued the statement Friday morning, after work crews were seen trying to remove the message “RESIGN LYDA RESIGN,” which had been painted in the street outside City Hall overnight between Thursday and Friday, according to reports.
“Mayor Krewson is not distracted by any of this and remains focused on what she was elected to do: addressing the needs of more than 300,000 St. Louisans who are counting on her to help get them through multiple public health and economic crises, including a worldwide pandemic,” Long said, according to KSDK-TV of St. Louis.
Also Friday morning, police cleared an "Occupy City Hall STL" camp that gathered outside the building, The Riverfront Times reported. Protesters had planned to stay until Krewson stepped down, the report said.
St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson speaks during a news conference at City Hall, Sept. 19, 2017. (Getty Images)
Krewson, 66, a Democrat and native of Iowa who has been mayor of St. Louis since April 2017, has been under fire since a Facebook Live briefing in late June, when she read the names and partial addresses of at least 10 protesters who called for the city to defund the police.
The mayor later apologized for reading the information and for causing “distress or harm to anyone,” but also noted the names and addresses were already “public information.”
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A group of protesters who claimed to be heading to Krewson’s home June 28 prompted St. Louis couple Mark and Patricia McCloskey to take up arms that day, fearing damage to their property as the protesters passed by.
The couple has been the subject of an investigation since then, and on Friday night had one of their weapons seized by authorities executing a search warrant at their home, KSDK reported.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the McCloskeys were charged with any crimes.
Fox News' Danielle Wallace contributed to this story.