by Leslie Layton
posted March 1
When Colleen Evans stopped by the Feb. 17 “Not my Presidents Day” protest at City Plaza, she hoped to voice her opposition to the Trump Administration and find camaraderie with like-minded people.
Instead, the Chico woman, who was wearing a knee brace to protect a broken kneecap, ended up at the Enloe Medical Center emergency room with new injuries. She arrived at Enloe bloodied, sore and dazed after a disastrous fall off the sidewalk on the east side of the plaza.
Almost two weeks later, a Chico Police Department investigation has left many questions unresolved, and Evans, 70, is recovering but frustrated that her story hasn’t been told.
Evans and several witnesses said she was forcefully shoved off the sidewalk. The man who was said to have done the shoving, Danny Peters, said he was the victim and not responsible for her fall. Both their accounts differ from the account Chico PD provided.
The story as told by Evans:
Evans was walking through the plaza and saw a cardboard cutout facing Main Street. It was leaning against a lamp post, not far from where one or two pro-Trump demonstrators stood, and she was unsure to whom it belonged. She picked it up to turn it around – was it Trump or Elon Musk she wondered – in order to snap a photo.
She heard screaming. She panicked, thinking she might get caught in the middle of something. “I was healing from a broken kneecap and the last thing I wanted was [to be in the middle of] an altercation,” she says.
“Now I’m just intent on getting out of there,” Evans recalls. “I didn’t know the yelling was about me. I dropped the sign, and the next thing I know [I feel] a forceful shove. I came down on my head and face. When I came to, I didn’t know where I was. I picked my head up and there was blood.”
Enloe told her she had suffered a concussion. She received a forehead bump, a “huge contusion” on her upper lip, bruising to her neck and right arm, sore ribs and torn ligaments.
Evans says the Chico police officer who interviewed her seemed not to believe her account. “Chico PD was so adamant about me changing my story to fit their narrative,” Evans says.
In an interview shortly after the incident, Evans said the officer told her that “there’s video evidence of me attacking him and I need to recant my story.” The interviewing officer approached her in the hallway at the ER – where she lay on a gurney for seven hours after her fall – and gave her “another chance” to recant, she said. She declined; she says she told the story as she recalled it.
The story according to Peters:
Minutes after Evans’s fall, Peters said he had been pushed by a woman and “smacked on the head” with a flagpole by a second woman after Woman #1 “grabbed my cardboard cutout” of President Donald Trump and took off with it. “I don’t have a chance with these friggin’ people,” he said.
As Peters tried to retrieve the cutout, he told reporters that Evans fell from the curb.
The story according to Chico PD via the DA:
Chico PD didn’t respond to a ChicoSol request for comment and forwarded its report to Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey, who spoke with ChicoSol.
Ramsey: Evans approaches Peters and “snatches the cutout from him and walks briskly back to the other folks.” After interviewing Evans, Chico PD reviewed “surveillance video” from a camera across the street, Ramsey said. Based on that, it concluded that Peters “goes after her, and in his grabbing for his Trump cutout, his shoulder impacts her shoulder and she goes down.”
But Ramsey, noting that two witnesses told police they saw the shove, added: “There’s a bit of a dispute as to how she ends up on the ground.”
A bystander then struck Peters with her flagpole, Ramsey said. The DA has no plans at this point to press charges against anyone involved.
Anti-Trump protester Susan Dobra witnessed the entire incident and provided ChicoSol with a detailed statement by email:
Dobra: “It was a large stand-alone cutout and he had it standing a few feet to his left,” Dobra said. “She went up and took it, and it bent in half as she walked away with it. He went after her and pushed her hard from behind, taking the cutout back. It all happened very fast, but that’s what I saw from a few feet away.”
That Evans picked up the cutout without making any direct contact with Peters matches what ChicoSol was told by Evans and witnesses. No one we spoke with who said Evans was shoved seems 100% sure how quickly she dropped the cutout.
“It was so shocking when he pushed her that I didn’t track the cutout,” Dobra said. “I was focused on seeing if she was ok.”
Update: Evans told ChicoSol she feels less safe and unheard and a little more “leery” of Chico PD. “I’m really upset and I’m still in a lot of pain,” Evans said.
Reflecting on the protest, she added: “I was having a great time, it was a positive event, and I messed the whole thing up. I’m so ashamed for even touching his sign, but there wasn’t even anybody around it, and I just wanted to turn it around to take a picture.
“I’m not a thief. A cardboard cutout of Trump? That’s the last thing I’d want.”
Leslie Layton is editor of ChicoSol.
I am glad that Susan Dobra was a witness and came forward. I know her personally and know that she would tell the account just as it happened. I am also disappointed with the Chico PD, that they would attempt to change the victims story line. I am very glad there were cameras to dispute PD attempt to change the narrative.
Why would a Chico PD investigator try to convince an injured, dazed, and likely medicated elderly woman to support the officers’ preferred version of events that would protect a Trump Supporter from facing criminal charges? Was the interrogation impartial? Doesn’t appear to be.
Both stories make one thing clear: the lady did not choose to dive down onto the pavement on her own. She had help.
Will Ramsey sweep the criminal act under the rug? Based on his comments to Chico Sol reporters, he likely will.
My first thought while reading this article is the guy with the big card board Trump sign, was probably at this event exercising his right to free speech, just as Miss Evan’s was by attending the “rally.”I understand the curiosity in the card board cut out of Trump, but the touching the sign to turn it around was the first wrong… it wasn’t her property and if that wasn’t bad enough, she ran off with it like a little kid, I get she realized what she did was wrong but it just seems to me that she probably already knew what she would find on that card board cut out. Everyone I think is entitled to their beliefs and opinions , everyone has them. It’s not quite as clear to me if the gentleman with the sign pushed her down accidentally or gave her a hard shove to the ground while retrieving his property. There’s conflicting stories, “witnesses “ saying they saw miss Evans shoved to the ground hard by the gentleman Trump supporter or he ran into her while he was retrieving his sign, which seems to be backed up by the surveillance video. Bottom line it seems this could have been avoided with a little respect… if used I don’t believe something like this would have happened. Tolerance for each others views and opinions.