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Man arrested after dispute with moviemaker
By JIM HARRINGTON
| Article published on Thursday, July 13, 2006 |
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CLEARWATER – Two men got into a scuffle on July 8 when one of them apparently disliked the other man’s taping of the goings-on at a street corner.
Shawn Lonsdale, a 38-year-old independent filmmaker who said he is making a documentary for local public access TV, was standing about 5:30 p.m. Saturday at the corner of Fort Harrison Avenue and Cleveland Street with a sign by his side that read “Cult Watch.”
He was panning the area with his camera, he said, when another man approached him on the street. Lonsdale said the man told him he had no right to film him and then grabbed his equipment.
Lonsdale said he pulled the camera back, but the men got into a fracas. The police were called and arrested Michael Fitzgerald, 52, charging him with a single count of battery, according to Wayne Shelor, police spokesman.
Lonsdale said the representatives from the Church of Scientology, whom he calls “handlers,” had been watching him throughout the day, but curiously, they disappeared from sight in the hour leading up to the fight.
A Scientology spokeswoman, who didn’t formally associate the church with Fitzgerald, said that Lonsdale has been harassing the Scientologists with his activities. The church’s spiritual headquarters are only blocks away from where the incident happened.
Pat Harney likened Lonsdale’s tactics to a member of the Ku Klux Klan standing outside a black church and screaming epithets into the house of worship.
Harney said the church has videos showing Lonsdale is the aggressor and it has turned those tapes over to the police.
“We’re concerned that he’s stalking the members of the church,” said Harney.
“We’ve advised members to avoid him.”
Fitzgerald has been released on $250 bond according to the Pinellas Sheriff’s Office Web site.
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Article published on Thursday, July 13, 2006
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