An Air Force bomb technician and member of President Obama’s security detail escaped charges after being accused of groping a local high school teacher and then getting in a fistfight with the manager of an Edgartown restaurant last summer.
On August 27, 2011, the night after Obama returned to Washington, explosives expert Peter McNally groped a local high school teacher at the Wharf, according to interviews with witnesses and police reports. The teacher filed a report with Edgartown Police two days later, one of at least two filed with area police against White House security team members last year.
“[McNally said], ‘I box. I kill people for a living. I protect the President of the United States,’ things like that. We kicked him out.”
- Edgartown bartender
In her statement to police, obtained by FoxNews.com, the teacher said she had her back to the room when, “I felt two hands deliberately placed on the sides of my breasts, which then slid down my torso to my waist and moved me to the left. I heard a voice say, ‘Excuse me.’”
Reached by FoxNews.com, the woman declined to discuss the incident. But a bartender who was there that night told FoxNews.com McNally was out of control.
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“He was just loud and grabbing girls and talking sh--,” the bartender recalled. “[McNally said], ‘I box. I kill people for a living. I protect the President of the United States,’ things like that. We kicked him out.”
According to interviews and police reports, McNally and a friend then walked across the street to The Atlantic restaurant, where he got into a fight with manager Jamie Zambrana at closing time. When Zambrana told McNally he needed to exit through the front door, "McNally threw a punch with a closed fist, striking [Zambrana] in the face, knocking him through the door and onto the ground," the police report states. "Zambrana stated he kicked McNally three times in the groin area, then punched McNally with a closed fist in the face. McNally then fell to the ground."
McNally struck his head on the railing of the porch, causing severe lacerations to the head. He also reported a lacerated liver. He spent more than two days in the hospital. Zambrana and McNally were both initially charged with assault.
“It is what it is, it was what it was,” Zambrana told FoxNews.com, declining further comment.
A local judge later ruled there was not enough evidence to charge McNally with groping the woman or to charge either McNally of Zambrana with assault. Edgartown Police Sgt. Craig Edwards told FoxNews.com he spoke with Air Force officials, who conducted their own investigation of the McNally incident.
It’s unclear what became of their investigation, but according to Facebook posts by McNally’s wife, the bomb expert retired on May 1.
McNally’s local attorney, James Powderly, told FoxNews.com that a local magistrate found there was not enough evidence to support the police department’s charge of indecent assault and battery in the case of the woman McNally allegedly groped. And he said a separate assault and battery complaint sought by police regarding the fight with Zambrana was dismissed at Zambrana’s request.
A spokeswoman for Tyndall Air Force Base, where McNally was stationed, told FoxNews.com “our legal office has nothing on it,” adding that they had no jurisdiction over the incident.
