Cary LGBTQ+ organizer injured in alleged Pride assault. Why she wants tougher charges
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- A man allegedly struck Sara Buxton with a flagpole at a Pride market event in Cary.
- Cary police charged 25-year-old Justin Batchelor with misdemeanor simple assault.
- Wake DA Lorrin Freeman said state hate crime laws exclude sexual orientation and gender.
A local LGBTQ+ organizer suffered a black eye after she and others say a man struck her with a flagpole bearing an American flag at a Cary Pride event. Now, that organizer is pushing for harsher charges against the man involved.
Sara Buxton, the owner of The Night Market Company — a queer-owned business curating open-air markets in the Triangle — hosted the Alphabet Soup Pride Market in Downtown Cary Park on June 13.
It was a “great event,” Buxton said in an online video, until a shirtless male “agitator” began running and pacing through the event with an American flag hoisted on a metal flagpole.
She said she asked the man to put a shirt on before he re-entered the event, as all other attendees were wearing shirts.
He then allegedly struck her face with the flagpole and called her homophobic slurs, she said in the video, showing her swollen eye to the camera.
“Queer owned businesses need your support always, not just during pride month,” Buxton wrote in the caption of a video detailing the incident. “Throwing Pride events shouldn’t involve physical harm and violence.”
Cary police charged Justin Batchelor, 25, of Cary with misdemeanor simple assault after interviewing witnesses on the scene. Court records show police issued a citation for the incident, meaning they did not take him into custody.
Batchelor is scheduled for a disposition hearing on August 13. He did not immediately return a request for comment for this story.
Batchelor faced another simple assault charge last year after police said he got out of his car in the middle of a Cary road and pushed an individual with both hands, according to court records. The case was voluntarily dismissed in January, the records show.
But the current assault charges aren’t sufficient, Buxton said in the Instagram video.
In the days after the incident, Buxton said she’s struggled to be in large crowds, bowing out of a Costco trip last week because of her unease around the hoards of people.
But she said she’s “not going to stop” speaking out about the incident in hopes of having the charges elevated.
“I don’t think it’s normal for people to speak out after they’ve been involved in a hate crime,” she said in the video. “That’s what it is. So, I’m here, and I’m going to continue working towards an end goal of finding some sort of justice for what happened to me. And not just to me … but people like me.”
NC hate crime law excludes sexual orientation, gender identity
Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said Buxton’s complaint hasn’t yet reached her office but that North Carolina’s hate crime law recognizes offenses motivated by race, color, religion, nationality or country of origin — not sexual orientation or gender identity.
Federal law does cover sexual orientation and gender identity, but it would take a federal complaint from the victim to elevate a district case to federal court, Freeman said.
Buxton deferred an interview request from The News & Observer to another organizer who witnessed the incident.
Helicia Chiang, the operations manager for the LGBT Center of Raleigh, was stationed at the Raleigh organization’s booth at the market when they first saw Batchelor walking through the event, shirtless with only his flag and “very short” red shorts.
Chiang said she took out her own Pride flag and waved it around before Buxton approached the man to ask him to put on a shirt.
“He turns around really quick, and I didn’t hear exactly what he said to her, but he’s holding the flagpole over his right shoulder and turns on a very aggressive 180 to the point where the flagpole smacks her directly on the side of the head and knocks her glasses off,” Chiang said.
Chiang said as other organizers approached the man, he began “screaming profanities” including a threat about a firearm, and sprinted away from the park.
As a LGBTQ+ organizer, Chiang has seen handfuls of protesters opposing Pride events, but she said she’s never seen an event turn violent.
Ahead of Out! Raleigh’s annual Pride festival this weekend, Chiang said the event will be equipped with a security presence on par with other large-scale city events, with heightened police presence and community volunteers monitoring the crowd.
And many festival-goers have their own trademark ways of drowning out hate, she said, like making clacking noises with large Pride fans and covering protesters’ signs with their own banners. But she said the focus remains on celebrating inclusion and identity.
“We’re not letting these protesters affect us,” she said. “They’re going to be here, and we can’t make them leave. It’s a public street, but just don’t pay them any mind, don’t let them affect your day. We’re here to celebrate.”
This story was originally published June 24, 2026 at 5:02 PM.
