The Wrongly Accused Dallas "Suspect" Speaks Out

Early Friday morning, protester Mark Hughes and his brother were blindsided when they found out that the Dallas police department had been circulating a photo of Mark — labeling the peaceful protester as a suspect in the late-night shooting that resulted in the death of five police officers, and the injury of seven more. So, since being released from police custody on Friday, what has Mark Hughes said? In a video interview with KTVT Friday morning, Hughes considered the dangerous position police had put him in when they began distributing his picture with the caption, “This is one of our suspects. Please help us find him!”

The photograph was not removed until late afternoon on Friday.

“I could’ve easily been shot,” said Hughes in the video that has been tweeted by journalist Matthew Keys. Hughes is not exaggerating — the brothers’ attorney Corwyn Davis mentioned in a conference Friday that “they have received thousands of death threats already,” according to Ben Guarino of the The Washington Post.

Hughes told KTVT that he had “no idea” about his picture being circulated until he received a phone call informing him. After finding out, he said he immediately flagged down a law enforcement officer.

Here's the video in which Hughes speaks out.

Though videos on Facebook do show that Hughes brought a gun with him to the protest like the one slung across his shoulder in the photo, as reported by Sewell Chan of the New York Times, video footage also shows Hughes handing over his gun to police around 9:00 p.m. In an interview with CBS DFW late Thursday, Cory Hughes supports this, contending that his brother was merely peacefully exercising his Second Amendment right to carry, and handed over his gun to police at his suggestion.

Hughes was released by police without an apology after 30 minutes of questioning, according to his statement in the video. He seemed fed up, going on to say, “At the end of the day, the system was trying to get me.” This refrain rings all too familiar following the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile — the very same shootings that Hughes was protesting against earlier that day.

While only hours earlier Hughes had been “laughing and talking” with police, he told the reporter of KTVT that police need to do something about the persecution he experienced by their hand. Are the police going to “come out and say that this young man had nothing to do with it?” Hughes asks the reporter.

At this point it's unclear why police sought out Hughes as a suspect, according to the New York Times Friday, and maybe even less clear if Hughes will ever receive the vindication he craves from the police any time soon.