Here’s your photo of the week:
Columbia University janitor Mario Torres slams 40-year-old trust fund kid James Carlson against the wall in Hamilton Hall with rabid leftists stormed the building late at night last Tuesday.
Mario Torres makes around $19 per hour. James Carlson owns in a $3.4 million townhouse in Brooklyn.
Mario Torres fought off the anti-Israel protesters when they stormed Hamilton Hall and took control of the building.
Torres later told reporter Francesca Block that the protesters were organized and their occupation of the building was planned.
James Carlson, who was arrested inside Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, has no affiliation with the University. As reported earlier, when Carlson was arrested inside the building, he was already under investigation for grabbing an Israeli flag from a man near campus and setting it on fire in April.
But who is Carlson? He is the privileged son of a millionaire with a long history of violent protests. And while Carlson “fights the man,” and rages against capitalism, which he can afford to do since it has benefitted him and his family, he goes home each night to his lavish $3.4 million Brooklyn brownstone property.
Carlson is a rabble rouser and an attorney by trade. He was booked as a possible leader of the violent protests at Hamilton Hall.
Francesca Block at The Free Press reported:
It’s the viral image that captured the clash between the anti-Israel protesters who stormed Columbia and the campus workers who tried to stop them. As the mob invaded Hamilton Hall in the early hours of April 30, a facilities worker was photographed pushing a demonstrator against a wall.
Later, it emerged that the protester was a 40-year-old trust fund kid named James Carlson, who owns a townhouse in Brooklyn worth $3.4 million. The man who tried to hold him back was Mario Torres, 45, who has worked at Columbia—where the average janitor makes less than $19 an hour—for five years.
Now, in an exclusive interview with The Free Press, Mario Torres describes the experience of being on duty as protesters stormed the building in the early hours of the morning, breaking glass and barricading the entrances. “We don’t expect to go to work and get swarmed by an angry mob with rope and duct tape and masks and gloves,” he said.
“They came from both sides of the staircases. They came through the elevators and they were just rushing. It was just like, they had a plan.” Mario said protesters with zip ties, duct tape, and masks “just multiplied and multiplied.”
At one point, he remembers “looking up and I noticed the cameras are covered.” It made him think: “This was definitely planned.”
Torres was trying to “protect the building” when he ended up in an altercation with Carlson: “He had a Columbia hoodie on and I managed to rip that hoodie off of him and expose his face.” (Carlson was later charged with five felonies, including burglary and reckless endangerment.) “I was freaking out. At that point, I’m thinking about my family. How was I gonna get out? Through the window?”
Read the rest of this riveting interview at The Free Press.