Lauren Valle Reveals New Details About Rand Paul Debate Altercation
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On Tuesday, Lauren Valle spoke for the first time since being thrust into the center of an alarming campaign kerfuffle when she was hurt outside a debate between Rand Paul and Jack Conway for Kentucky's Senate seat. Valle said that she recognized the Paul supporters who went after her and felt frightened almost immediately after they claimed they were there to do "crowd control." Her treatment, she said, was "premeditated."
I have been at a bunch of events before, the previous debate, and the Rand Paul campaign knows me and they have expressed their distaste for my work before. What happened last night was that about five minutes before Rand Paul's car arrived they identified me and my partner, Alex, who was with me. They surrounded me. There was five of them. They motioned to each other and got behind me. My partner Alex heard them say 'We are here to do crowd control we might have to take someone out.'
When Rand Paul's car arrived a couple of them stepped in front of me so I stepped off the curb to get around them to get back out front. At that point they started grabbing for me and I ran all the way around the car with them in pursuit. The footage is after I've run all the way around the car and I'm in front of the car and that is when they took me down. One or two people twisted my arms behind my back and took me down... It was about two-to-three seconds after that that another person stomped on my head. And I lay there for 20 seconds or so and my partner Alex came and got me up and that's the point where there is the media clip of me speaking.
Valle said that the closest she got to Paul was "about five feet away" and that was only because she was running from the crowd. As for the notion that she was kicked on the neck, not the head, she replied: "My memory of them is sort of that of a traumatized person. I think it was my head. My head is in a lot of pain today; my neck is kind of kinked. But I distinctly remember a blow to my head."
Addressing the next steps that she will take legally, she said, simply that "there will be further legal action taken" and that "detectives are moving forward with the case."
On Tuesday the Lexington Division of Police identified the suspect in the case as Tim Profitt, a Paul campaign volunteer. Profitt had, earlier, admitted that he was involved in the fracas. And while he said that the camera angle made it seem more violent than it was, he apologized for his treatment of Valle. He is, nevertheless, "being served with a criminal summons ordering him to appear before a Fayette County District Court Judge," according to law enforcement authorities.
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First Posted: 10/26/10 05:29 PM ET Updated: 05/25/11 07:10 PM ET