An incident captured on video outside of a Republican candidate for Virginia governor event shows a reporter getting assaulted.

 

@ZTPetrizzo/Twitter

Former Daily Dot reporter Zachary Petrizzo now writes at The Washington Post.

Voters in Virginia will pick between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin for governor in less than two weeks.

A bellwether race for the 2022 elections, the last phase of the contest is stirring up emotions.

On the previous night, one individual appeared to be overtaken by these sentiments. Video appears to show him striking Salon's Zachary Petrizzo outside a Youngkin demonstration in northern Virginia, which is where the video was captured.

This was captured on camera by ex-Daily Dot reporter Petrizzo, who tweeted it out.

Glenn Youngkin's fan just came up and punched my hand," he said in his blog post.

Ah, that'll be removed. As he approaches Petrizzo in the video, the guy exclaims, "You foolish fool."

The guy swings his arms at protestors holding an inflatable chicken that resembles former President Donald Trump after he appears to have struck Petrizzo. I don't know of anyone who vanished into thin air under the cover of darkness during the Trump administration," he tells them. It's unclear to whom he's talking when he mentions disappearances.

According to Petrizzo, who spoke to the Daily Dot, he was unharmed. He received a direct message from the individual on Twitter, in which he expressed his displeasure with schooling, in particular critical race theory. According to Youngkin's campaign, the state's public schools teach the theory, which looks at American history through a prism that incorporates racism, since that is not the case.

As the guy drove away, Petrizzo recorded him screaming, "My children are not the property of the state!"

Petrizzo said that the individual was aware of his status as a Salon reporter.

His anger was directed at a group of pro-Terry [McAuliffe] supporters who were near the chicken at the time of the video's filming, according to the source.

As of the time of this writing, the video capturing the event had received almost 175,000 views. Some people laughed at him, while others were horrified and disturbed by what they saw.

@floofius said, "Getting real 'old guy shouts at cloud' intensity. "Anger and hate are a helluva addiction," said another Twitter user.

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Petrizzo then tweeted that he'd made a police report about the incident. He said that authorities have determined the suspect to be a local. According to online court records and a felony division clerk, The Daily Dot is not naming him since no charges have been filed against him.

A message seeking response from the individual was sent to a Facebook page thought to be his, but he did not answer. Police were able to link the Facebook account to Petrizzo's video and identify the individual in it. A local school board is criticized, while Trump is praised in posts on the website. For example, a commenter argues that because Trump was preoccupied with investigations and impeachment, "the country wasn't prepared" for the epidemic due of the distraction.

Petrizzo sees this as a harbinger of things to come.

A post-Jan. 6 world in which politics has increasingly found itself resorting to violence, he added, "would reflect the occurrence." No doubt, we dwell in an awful part of the globe.