At 8:26 p.m. July 5, an Atlanta man shared a video that shook the nation. The next day, he was arrested when he showed up for work at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta.
“The whole thing was super-fishy,” Christopher James LeDay told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The video, which depicted the shooting of a Baton Rouge man by a police officer, instantly went viral. Within an hour it was being shown on cable news networks. #AltonSterling has been trending on Twitter ever since. Sterling was killed while selling CDs on a street corner by one of two officers restraining him.
LeDay, 34, received the video from a friend in Baton Rouge, where he once lived. The friend knew the woman who shot the footage at the Triple S market and told LeDay she was reluctant to post it.
"I knew it was groundbreaking," said LeDay, whose Instagram account, @mobbgod, has more than 13,000 followers. "They knew I could make it go viral."
He tagged Baton Rouge news stations and Hollywood celebrities. Actor Don Cheadle tweeted about it. New York Daily News columnist Shaun King, closely aligned with the #BlackLivesMatter movement, shared it within an hour of LeDay’s posting.
Protests began the following night in Baton Rouge and haven't stopped since.
“We weren’t going to let (the police) get away with it this time,” LeDay said.
But LeDay, according to Dunwoody police, had gotten away without answering to misdemeanor traffic charges stemming from a July 2014 arrest.
On July 21, 2014, LeDay was arrested and charged with four traffic violations: no proof of insurance, no valid tag, driving on a suspended license and a headlight violation, DeKalb County jail records show. When LeDay failed to appear in court, a bench warrant was issued for his arrest.
It’s not known whether someone tipped off Dunwoody police that LeDay worked at Dobbins, or whether his instant notoriety alone prompted police to take action on the outstanding warrant. But when he arrived at work Wednesday, he was stopped at the gate, he said. He was handcuffed and shackled, and from there taken to the DeKalb jail.
LeDay was booked into jail at 10:26 p.m. Wednesday and released the next evening at 6:42 p.m. after posting $1,231 bond, records showed. A new court date for LeDay had not yet been set Monday afternoon, according to a court clerk.
Despite his arrest, LeDay said he had no regrets about posting the video.
“It’s what I signed up for,” he said.
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