A Miami judge rejected the self-defense claims of a man who pulled a gun and hurled racial slurs at a group of Black protesters who blocked him in traffic in 2019. The ruling will force Mark Bartlett, who lives in Broward County, to face a December trial for aggravated assault with a firearm and improperly brandishing a gun. “The use of racial comments shows he was simmering,” Judge Alberto Milian said Thursday, per the Miami Herald. “He was an angry man. He was inconvenienced. He wanted to go back to Broward County. There was no reasonable justification.” Bartlett claimed he was goaded into using the words after the protesters blocked traffic on a Miami bridge, saying he was “being held hostage” in his SUV as he claimed he was called a “cracker.” Video showed Bartlett responding to the blockade with “n*****s suck!”

In his view, he was only “putting on a show” and, unironically, did not view his use of a racist word as racist. “Was there any racial component?” a prosecutor asked. “In my head, no,” Bartlett said. “It’s a derogatory term for Black people. But racist? No.”