The far-right streamer and podcast host Nick Fuentes allegedly pepper-sprayed a west suburban woman and pushed her down his front steps as she went to ring his doorbell Sunday afternoon, the woman told the Tribune this week.
Berwyn Police Department Deputy Chief Michael Ochsner confirmed that the department had responded to Fuentes’ home but said he was unable to provide further details.
Marla Rose, 57, a self-described progressive, said she approached Fuentes’ home Sunday after friends who knew she lived in Berwyn encouraged her to go see if rumors of prank deliveries to his home were true. Fuentes’ home address had been leaked online in response to his posts on social media where he boasted, “Your body, my choice. Forever” last week in an apparent reference to abortion rights after Donald Trump won the presidential election.
“There had been chatter about people sending (Fuentes) boxes of dog poop or used menstrual products or whatever,” Rose said. “They were like, ‘You’ve got to go by and see if he’s getting deliveries.’”
Their messages piqued her curiosity, she said. The vegan lifestyle writer has lived in Berwyn for 11 years but had no idea that 26-year-old Fuentes lived in Illinois, much less 10 minutes from her.
She said she found the house and was making a short video of herself on the sidewalk out front when another female onlooker pulled up in her car and suggested Rose ring the doorbell, which she hadn’t planned to do but to which agreed.
She said Fuentes opened the door before she could ring the doorbell.
“In that same movement, he pepper-sprayed me in the face, pushed me down the steps (and) screamed an expletive at me,” Rose said.
She alleged that Fuentes then ran down the steps, grabbed Rose’s phone and went back into his house.
Rose said the woman who had encouraged her to ring Fuentes’ doorbell called police, and an officer came and took a report from her and Fuentes, retrieving her phone in the process. She added that her phone is now broken, allegedly because Fuentes stomped on it.
The officer called an ambulance to look at Rose’s eyes and check her vitals, but she said emergency workers didn’t seem concerned. The officer told her not to knock on the door again, she said.
Rose said Monday she was looking for a lawyer and was uncertain about whether to press charges against Fuentes out of concerns for her safety if she angers extremists.
Fuentes didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from the Tribune.
The 2016 graduate of west suburban Lyons Township High School is no stranger to controversy. While he has said he is not a white supremacist or white nationalist, the federal government labeled Fuentes a white supremacist in a court document.
In 2017, Fuentes attended the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a young woman named Heather Heyer was run over and killed by an avowed neo-Nazi, and Fuentes was an integral part of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rallies.
In the 24 hours following his misogynistic post on X, there was a 4,600% increase in mentions of the phrases “your body, my choice” and “get back in the kitchen” on the social media site, according to an analysis from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
The phrase “your body, my choice” also appeared to have made its way into schools, the researchers said.
“Young girls and parents have used social media to share instances of offline harassment. They include the phrase being directed at them within schools or chanted by young boys in classes,” the report said.
Chicago Tribune’s Rebecca Johnson contributed.
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