A 70-year-old poet was arrested in Laconia, New Hampshire, on Wednesday after video showed him slapping an 18-year-old volunteer at a Turning Point Action table outside a polling place on Election Day, police said.
Stephen Redic was taken into custody around 8 a.m. Wednesday and charged with misdemeanor simple assault and disorderly conduct, a violation, the Laconia Police Department said. He is scheduled for arraignment in Laconia on December 10.
The confrontation unfolded Tuesday outside the Woodland Heights Elementary School, where voters were casting ballots in the midterm elections. According to police, Redic approached the Turning Point tent as he was leaving the polling place and said he wanted to read a poem about rich people. Video of the encounter shows him raising his voice at the young volunteer, giving him the middle finger, and then slapping him across the face before walking away.
Turning Point Action described the volunteer as an 18-year-old. Police said they had no prior contacts with Redic before the incident, and that witness statements and the footage led to the arrest warrant.
Redic published a book of poems, "Tying My Shoes," in 2023, in which he wrote of meeting every U.S. president since Dwight D. Eisenhower. The incident comes 14 months after Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA and its affiliate Turning Point Action, was assassinated at Utah Valley University while speaking under a similar tent.
The arrest gives the viral clip what it did not have on its own: a police case. What happens next will turn on the video, the witness accounts, and the court process in Laconia.
