Child-abuse charges dropped against Fort Lauderdale anti-mask protester

Charges have been dropped against anti-mask protester Dan Bauman, arrested in August after video showed him shoving a student at Fort Lauderdale High School.

The victim — a minor, whose name was redacted from court documents — said she wished to press charges, but prosecutors said they lacked evidence of a crime. The confrontation was caught on cellphone video and police body worn camera.

The Fort Lauderdale Police Department initially charged Bauman, 50, with aggravated child abuse, a first-degree felony, but downgraded it the following day to child abuse without great bodily harm, a third-degree felony.

But that charge was dropped last week. In a memo, Broward County Assistant State Attorney Stacey Honowitz said there was “no reasonable likelihood of conviction.”

Bauman had showed up to the school with his daughter the previous three days protesting the COVID mask mandate. On that day, the victim walked up to Bauman, who was filming the confrontation on his phone, and said “I’m so sick of you doing this,” and grabbed his phone, according to Honowitz. She goes on to say that Bauman grabbed the student only in an attempt to get his phone back.

The girl did not suffer any injuries, according to Honowitz, and her taking of Bauman’s phone is “clear as can be on the video,” she said.

Honowitz said she asked two other prosecutors to watch the video and said that they all agreed Bauman had committed no crime.

Cory Strolla, a West Palm Beach attorney representing Bauman, said: “The video evidence proved that Mr. Bauman was actually the victim of a violent felony committed by an unruly and undisciplined student that interjected herself into an adult situation that had absolutely nothing to do with her.”

Austen Erblat can be reached at aerblat@sunsentinel.com, 954-599-8709 or on Twitter @AustenErblat.

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