The Southern Poverty Law Center have dug up an arrest report from a 2021 incident in which two members of Patriot Front – the hardcore white supremacist MAGA hate group arrested en masse outside of a LGBTQ Pride event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho earlier this month, accidentally torched a banner reading “Victory or Death Patriot Front US” they hanged on a Texas highway overpass.
On May 21, 2021 two Sanger, Texas police officers responded to a pedestrian bridge over I-35 after a caller said they “saw people on top of the cage of the pedestrian bridge” and “some kind of sign hanging from the bridge with flares on it.” The cops saw a red Chevy Equinox nearby and “had the driver exit the vehicle and asked for identification,” determining the driver was named Austin James Amato. The cops wrote Amato claimed to be waiting for friends but refused to share further details without a lawyer present. The cops then “observed there was a sign up on the pedestrian bridge,” and saw “the banner on the bridge begin to catch fire, and part of it fall onto the northbound lanes of traffic of I-35.” The officers were able to retrieve the unburned remains of the banner. Amato and fellow Patriot Fronter Tristan Yeager were arrested at the scene.