A woman was charged Friday for organizing a protest in Trenton of the stay-at-home orders instituted last month by Gov. Phil Murphy to help slow the spread of the coronavirus in New Jersey.
Kim Pagan, of Toms River was charged by the New Jersey State Police with violating the emergency orders, according to a release from New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal and Colonel Patrick J. Callahan, Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police.
The protestors gathered outside the Statehouse and other locations in Trenton on Friday afternoon as Murphy and state health officials held their daily coronavirus press briefing.
A video taken by a woman who was live streaming the protest on Facebook showed people driving by the Statehouse honking their horns with American flags waving from their windows and others holding signs and flags on the sidewalk in front of the building.
A woman holding a megaphone could also be seen among the relatively small crowd along with a group of masked New Jersey State Police troopers that the woman filming kept panning over to during the course of the nearly 10-minute long video.
Elsewhere in New Jersey, William J. Hayden, the president of the Skylands Tea Party, told NJ Advance Media that he considered gathering with 10 to 20 others on the Sussex County-owned Newton Green to protest Murphy’s executive orders. Hayden said he opposes closing the parks, in addition to other restrictions imposed by the governor.
Across the country, protests against stay-at-home orders have taken place in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina and Utah, according to CNN.