A homophobe from South Dakota thinks it’s utterly ridiculous that he could face criminal charges for posting a Facebook Live video of himself dousing a rainbow flag in lighter fluid and setting it ablaze then shrieking, “Burn! Burn! Burn! You queer sons of b*tches!”
Darrin Pesall allegedly stole the flag from the home of Troy Kriech, a gay resident living in Webster, South Dakota, earlier this month.
The flag went missing from Kreich’s yard on July 23. One day later, Pesall’s video surfaced on Facebook Live.
We’ll warn you that it contains some pretty awful language.
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Darin Pesall you think cause you took it down that this just goes away, well it doesn’t. This is not okay and your not getting away with it. You stole personal property and then did this. Absolutely disgusting and sad. This is a hate crime and your not getting away with it.
Posted by Troy Kriech on Sunday, July 26, 2020
“Right here, there’s a flag that deserves to be f*cking burned,” Pesall yells in the video.
“Right here, we’re burning the f*cker! All you pansy-a** f*cking queer degenerate sons of b*tches, watch it!”
He then douses the flag in lighter fluid before saying he needs to wait until after work to burn it, a promise he ultimately followed through with.
Here’s part 2 hope everyone sees the kind of person you are
Posted by Troy Kriech on Sunday, July 26, 2020
“Burn, burn, burn, you queer sons of a b*tches! Yeehaw!” Pesall squeals in a second video as he watches the flag go up in flames.
“Go home and cry to your fucking mommies about that, you 30-year-old living in the basement sons of a b*tches!”
Pesall later removed the homophobic videos from Facebook, but not before Kriech shared a copy of them, along with the caption:
Darin Pesall you think cause you took it down that this just goes away, well it doesn’t. This is not okay and your not getting away with it. You stole personal property and then did this. Absolutely disgusting and sad. This is a hate crime and your not getting away with it.
Speaking to KELO-TV, Kriech said, “I was just disturbed, disgusted–especially coming from someone I know, that they would actually do something that hateful and disgusting.”
He added that he would like to see hate crime charges brought against Pesall.
But Day County State Attorney Danny Smeins says that isn’t possible since South Dakota’s hate crimes law (still!) doesn’t protect LGBTQ people.
“I don’t think there’s a crime itself in the burning of the flag,” Smeins said. “It’s a crime to steal it and it’s a crime to trespass on property to remove it. In addition, with most crimes, it might be the cover up that is the most serious crime, and that is lying about aspects of the event.”
As for Pesall, he said he regrets posting the video to Facebook. But he stopped short of saying he regrets actually burning the flag.
“It shouldn’t have been done the way it was done,” he said, adding that he compares burning the rainbow flag to “the uproar over tearing down war monuments” and “the controversy over the Confederate flag.”
He also said he thinks the whole thing is being blown out of proportion.
Watch KELO-TV’s report.
Chrisk
Yeah, I’ll bet his breath stinks of cheap whiskey. Effing loser.
scottjamesmiller
Or his sister.
jayceecook
“I was just disturbed, disgusted–especially coming from someone I know…”
I call BS. If you knew him then you’d absolutely know he was capable of something like this. Maybe not this particular act but definitely something along the same lines. People just don’t become homophobic (or any of the -obics) overnight. They show patterns of that kind of hate, however small, in their daily lives. So either that person is woefully blind to discerning a person’s character or they are feigning disgust for the sake of optics.
Cam
A lot of people don’t know their neighbors that well. He didn’t say how well he knew the guy.
jayceecook
Kriech lived there for 13 years and it’s a very small town. Very small. That he has only experienced a couple minor problems because he’s gay. Yet then says he will see this through legally because it’s hard being gay in South Dakota.
When you say, ““I was just disturbed, disgusted–especially coming from someone I know, that they would actually do something that hateful and disgusting.” that means you apparently know them well enough to *not* expect something like this from them. Now he’s saying that he’s moving all his belongings to Minneapolis to live there because it’s a more accepting community. While the idiot who burned the flag says it’s not the flag that was stolen.
I’m not saying the guy deserved to have his flag stolen and allegedly burned but he never put one up before in all the years he lived there. Then decided to this year never expecting anything like this to happen. But at the same time he’s in the process of moving to a different state because he says IT IS something that can happen. But also he would never expect somebody who he says he knows to do something as awful as what the homophobe did.
I got whiplash from just trying to follow Kriech’s train of thought. So is Webster the kind of small southern town where you rarely get bothered for being gay or is it a small southern town full of hateful people who make it so terrible for gay people they have to flee to another state? That’s what I’m merely pointing out.
Cam
@jayceecook
hmmmmmm, point taken.
If I didn’t know better (And I don’t), it could almost sound like a situation where the homophobe stopped over a few drunken nights and now is going overboard to prove just how “not gay” he is.
cristy
Hi, my name is Cristy and I was troys roommate until he moved back to mn. One day we were just hanging out whatching chers farewell tour and having a good time. Troy mentioned he always wanted to hang his flag but webster being such a small town he didn’t know how it would go over. I told him to be proud of who he is and I definitely thought we should hang it, so we did. We never expected anything like this would happen. It’s not like troy was friends with this asshole, he just knew him from his job as a bartender. Which I believe is what he meant when he said he didn’t expect something like this from someone he knew. As for him moving, there were other circumstances involved in his decision.
Heywood Jablowme
It’s legal to burn a flag. Any flag. But it has to be your own flag, you can’t steal it, dumb@ss!
Neoprene
I wish the reporter had pressed him on where he obtained the flag. That might have turned out funny. Wonder if he had prepared an answer beyond “I didn’t steal it.”
Troysky
Probably jerked off to gay porn, moaning with legs shaking, felt guilty….sooo THIS WILL FIX IT!
Chrisk
I was thinking that too since I don’t see the that town having much of a gay population. I’m sure gay porn is on an endless loop inside of his head though. Only way to explain the anger.
KerryB
No wonder all the local gardens have been stripped of cucumbers…
JB
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
blackhook
Another dumber-than-dirt, self-hating closeted freak
Jerry
This brought back memories of me at 19, hooked up with a neighbor and had amazing sex. One month later I have 62 stitches in my face from him beating me near death. This is guilt anger, he is dangerous.
wikidBSTN
Closet case.