24 Hours after the footage of Alton Sterling being shot and killed by Baton Rouge police went viral, the man who initially posted the clip online has had his own brush with law enforcement. Chris LeDay, an Atlanta native who did not film the shooting video but was the first person to post it online, helped the story gain national attention when he shared it on his Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts. As the story began to circulate into being front page news, LeDay was arrested while on the way to his job at Dobbins Air Reserve Base.
Recalling the incident on his Facebook page, LeDay believes his arrest was retaliation for sharing the clip. Speaking with the blog Photography Is Not A Crime, he says that he was detained by military and civilian police officers and told that he fit the description of someone who is wanted for battery. After being handcuffed and shackled, he was taken to the police station where he was reportedly told that he was arrested for unpaid traffic tickets.
After spending the night in jail, he was released after paying $1,231 in fines. Though he admits that he did not pay the tickets because he couldn’t afford to, LeDay said that his license was suspended and that is why he frequently uses Uber on his commute to work. Although he believes that the charges that were levied against him were minuscule, LeDay feels that the entire ordeal was retribution for posting video of the Sterling shooting. This scenario is somewhat similar to that of Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed the video of Eric Garner being killed in 2014 and immediately arrested following the media fracas.
