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Blaze News original: Elderly pro-lifer energized over new trial for thug who pulverized his face outside Planned Parenthood
Things couldn't have been worse for Mark Crosby, then 73 years old, when a decades-younger male he estimates stands 6 feet, 6 inches tall and weighs 250 pounds brutally punched and kicked his face and head outside a Baltimore Planned Parenthood in May 2023, shattering his cheekbone and eye socket and turning his face into a bloody pulp.
But things turned around in big way Thursday for Crosby. That's when the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office said it's planning to retry his 28-year-old attacker on a first-degree assault charge, the Baltimore Banner reported.
'They want us to get hurt again so we don't come back. But I'm not going away. I'm not backing down.'
"We have to win this," Crosby told Blaze News in the aftermath of the announcement, adding that he believes defendant Patrick Brice has "got to go to jail, or the pro-aborts will think they can get away with this."
At trial last month, Brice was convicted on two counts of second-degree assault and reckless endangerment for his physical attacks on Crosby and fellow pro-life advocate Dick Schaefer, who was 84 years old at the time, the Banner noted in an earlier story.
While jurors acquitted Brice on one count of first-degree assault against Schaefer, the paper said they failed to reach a unanimous verdict on the first-degree assault charge against Brice for attacking Crosby — knocking him to the ground, punching him in his head, and kicking him in his face while he was on his back on the sidewalk. Surveillance video shows the whole thing.
Getting a new trial for the first-degree assault charge was important, because not pursuing it meant the very real possibility that Brice could skate past jail time altogether. Now that's back in play.
"They want us to get hurt again so we don't come back," Crosby told Blaze News of his five-days-a-week pro-life work with Schaefer in front of that Planned Parenthood. "But I'm not going away. I'm not backing down."
'He walks by me and smirks'
One might assume Brice — upon learning that he might be handed some serious jail time if a jury convicts him of first-degree assault — would have appeared at least somewhat serious or reflective, but Crosby told Blaze News that his attacker actually smirked at him on the street outside the courthouse Thursday.
"He walks by me and smirks," Crosby emphasized, adding that after walking farther down the street, Brice actually turned around and "looked my way" and waved.
Crosby told Blaze News he likened it to Brice saying to him, "Up yours, buddy. I'm still out on the street."
Indeed, Crosby told Blaze News that Brice "is a hero to some people in pro-abort community" for what Assistant State’s Attorney Ashley Sudberry in her opening remarks last month said was a “brazen, callous, barbaric" attack against him and Schaefer.
On May 26, 2023, Crosby and Schaefer were praying, holding pro-life signs, and offering pro-life materials to people entering the abortion facility, Catholic Review said. Brice was arguing with Schaefer about abortion and is seen on surveillance video charging into Schaefer and tackling him backward into a large flower pot. According to WBAL-TV, a witness said the attacker knocked Schaefer out cold "for several minutes."
The video shows Crosby running over to help Schaefer, but Brice easily knocks Crosby down to the sidewalk before punching Crosby in the head, kicking Crosby in the face, and then walking away. You can view a video report here about the attack.
Local pro-life advocate John Roswell told LifeSiteNews at the time that Crosby’s “plate bone in his upper right cheek is completely fractured” and that he “is bleeding from some unidentified area behind his eye, and the bone eye orbit is completely shattered and will have to be replaced with metal.”
Crosby told Blaze News in a February interview that he was blind in his right eye "for nine days" after the attack, spent three days at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, was "spitting blood," and that a piece of his iris is missing.
He also told Blaze News he still experiences foreign body sensation, which is a "feeling that something's in your eye and you can't get it out. But I can live with that. Babies are being murdered. I give it up for them."
'It was a brutal attack, and it does merit a new trial, for sure.'
Attorney Terrell Roberts — retained by the Thomas More Society to assist Crosby amid deliberations — on Friday told Blaze News that the new trial is "good news" and that he anticipates it will provide a much greater emphasis on the serious nature of Crosby's injuries.
Roberts added to Blaze News that part of getting a first-degree assault conviction — which could result in a jail sentence of 25 years — is showing a jury how badly impaired Crosby's vision became after Brice's attack. Roberts said the damage to his client's right eye — specifically the iris — is "permanent" and Crosby suffers from "extreme photo sensitivity," meaning that he essentially has the use of only one eye, which is a "serious disability."
He also told Blaze News that the prosecution will be able to present other documentation, such as the CT scan of Crosby's head, which showed that the "floor of the orbital bone was fractured so badly" that fat actually was seeping through it.
"Next time around, this is going to be front and center," Roberts told Blaze News regarding showing a jury all the medical data at the new trial, which he expects will take place before August at the latest.
Roberts added to Blaze News that he will discuss with Sudberry — who will be prosecuting Brice's new trial — the issue of a hate crime in connection with the May 2023 attack on the pro-life men due to their "pretty obvious" religious beliefs.
Either way, for Roberts the first-degree assault charge is a "'no doubt about it' type of thing," particularly when video shows Brice kicking Crosby in the head.
"It was a brutal attack, and it does merit a new trial, for sure," Roberts told Blaze News.
February's trial, in which Brice escaped a verdict on first-degree assault, saw his attorney, assistant public defender Matthew Connell, calling Schaefer and Crosby “old white men” who say “the most vile things” to women and see themselves as “religious martyrs," the Catholic Review said.
Connell added that Brice “didn’t mean to hurt them that bad" and “made a mistake," the Banner reported.
Crosby told Blaze News that video of Brice's beatdown of Crosby and Schaefer was shown in court and that one juror was "crying," while "others were looking away" from the violence onscreen.
Anything else?
Brice's sentencing for his second-degree assault and reckless endangerment convictions was supposed to take place Thursday, but Baltimore Circuit Judge Yvette M. Bryant that day postponed sentencing until Aug. 7, the Banner reported.
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