‘It smelled of onions and mustard,’ Border Patrol officer hit by sandwich says as trial begins

By Holmes Lybrand, CNN

(CNN) — “He did it. He threw the sandwich.”

That’s how the defense counsel for Sean Dunn, the man who threw a sub-style sandwich at a Border Patrol officer in Washington, DC, this summer began the federal trial against him Tuesday morning.

The United States government, Dunn’s attorney Julia Gatto told the jury, “turned that moment, a thrown sandwich, into a criminal case. A federal criminal case charging a federal criminal offense.”

The case serves as a certain symbol in the backlash the Trump administration’s deployment of federal troops in DC this summer faced from residents. The sandwich-throwing incident also became a moment of resistance in the city, with spray-painted posters popping up around the capital in the wake of the alleged assault.

On Tuesday, the Border Patrol officer testified about his experience.

Greg Lairmore told the jury that Dunn “became really irritated and started yelling obscenities” at him and other officers that night before throwing “a subway style sandwich at me that struck me in the chest.”

“It smelled of onions and mustard,” Lairmore said of the sandwich, which “exploded all over my chest.”

‘Can you tell if it’s a turkey sandwich?’

Another attorney for Dunn, Sabrina Shroff, pressed Lairmore on that response, showing a photo of the sandwich on the ground, still wrapped in the Subway paper.

“Can you tell if it’s a turkey sandwich?” Sabrina pressed, emphasizing that the sandwich remained wrapped. “Lettuce? Tomatoes?”

Lairmore said he could not tell from the picture, but claimed he had mustard stains on his uniform and pieces of the sandwich hanging from his radio equipment that night.

“From the photo it looks bent and out of shape,” the officer said of the sandwich.

Lairmore also said he had received gag gifts related to the sandwich incident from some of his colleagues, including a plush sandwich and a patch that said “felony footlong.”

Lairmore chuckled when he described the gifts. Of the stuffed toy sandwich, he said, “I put it on top of my shelf in the office.”

Before the incident and after leaving the Subway restaurant, Dunn soon became “red-faced and enraged,” Lairmore testified, “calling me and my colleagues all kinds of names. Saying we were fascist.”

“I didn’t respond. That’s his constitutional right to express his opinion,” Lairmore, a division chief who has been with Customs and Border Protection for 23 years, said.

During the trial, body-worn camera footage taken from the night of Dunn’s arrest was played for the jury, including a portion where Dunn told an officer: “I was trying to draw them away from where they were. I succeeded.”

‘You can’t go around throwing stuff at people when you’re mad’

As neither party disputes the basic facts of the case, jurors will need to determine whether the sandwich-throwing is enough to convict Dunn on the misdemeanor assault charge.

“Look, I understand you may all have views of the federal law enforcement presence in DC,” Assistant US Attorney John Parron told the jury during opening statements Tuesday. “And that’s fine, we’re not trying to convince you otherwise. But respectfully, that’s not what this case is about. This case is about the fact that you can’t go around throwing stuff at people when you’re mad.”

“When we have disputes, we settle them verbally,” Parron added, concluding that Dunn threw the sandwich and “forcibly assaulted him.”

Gatto argued that the throwing of the sandwich served “as an exclamation mark at the end of a verbal outburst,” from Dunn, who was upset by the surge of federal officers in DC and the Trump administrations’ deportation efforts.

“He is not a fan. He thinks recent immigration enforcement is racist,” Gatto said, adding that Dunn saw the local federal takeover of DC law enforcement as “fascism.”

Of the charge her client faces, Gatto said, “bodily injury, that’s the standard.”

“They will not come close to convincing you beyond a reasonable doubt the conduct was forcible,” Gatto concluded.

The trial, which presiding Judge Carl Nichols called the “simplest case” in the history of the world, will continue Wednesday.

A DC jury recently acquitted a different resident who was also charged with assault for allegedly moving her knee up toward an officer while being restrained after filming officers as they made immigration-related arrests.

This story has been updated to include additional testimony.

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