A 48-year-old man who has lived in recent years in Oxon Hill, Md. and Norfolk, Va., was arrested in Norfolk on July 14 for allegedly assaulting five men he believed to be gay by spraying them in the face with pepper spray between 2018 and 2021 in D.C.’s Meridian Hill Park, which is also known as Malcolm X Park.

The arrest of Michael Thomas Pruden came two weeks after a federal grand jury handed down an indictment on June 29 charging Pruden with five counts of assault on federal land, one count of impersonating a federal officer, and a hate crime sentencing enhancement alleging that he assaulted four of the men because of their perceived sexual orientation.

“After nightfall, Meridian Hill Park was informally known in the Washington, D.C. community to be a meeting location for men seeking to engage in consensual sexual encounters with other men,” the indictment by the U.S. District Court for D.C. grand jury states. “This practice is colloquially known as ‘cruising,’” the indictment says.

“Michael Thomas Pruden frequented Meridian Hill Park after nightfall and on multiple occasions, including those described below, assaulted men in Meridian Hill Park by approaching them with a flashlight, giving police-style commands, and spraying them with a chemical irritant,” the indictment states.

The D.C. federal grand jury handed down its indictment against Pruden 11 months after a U.S. District Court trial jury in Alexandria, Va., found him not guilty of a charge of assault with a dangerous weapon for allegedly pepper spraying and striking in the head with a large tree branch a man on Daingerfield Island in Alexandria, which is also known as a gay cruising site.

Federal court records in Virginia show that the Daingerfield Island assault took place on March 21, 2021, five days before the D.C. grand jury indictment says Pruden allegedly assaulted the fifth victim in the Meridian Hill Park attacks on March 26, 2021.

The Virginia court records show that Pruden was arrested for the Daingerfield Island assault on May 7, 2021, about two months after the assault took place. The trial court jury acquitted him in that case on Aug. 11, 2021, the court records show. The online court records do not provide information about the witness testimony and arguments by prosecutors and the defense attorney that may have prompted the jury to acquit Pruden in that case.

A July 14 statement released by the U.S. Department of Justice announcing the indictment against Pruden for the Meridian Hill Park assaults says the U.S. Park Police and the FBI’s Washington Field Office conducted the investigation for the case. The statement notes that Meridian Hill Park is one of several federal parks located in D.C. that are under the jurisdiction of U.S. Park Police.

Neither the indictment nor the DOJ statement mentions that U.S. Park police for years have been arresting gay men in Meridian Hill Park on misdemeanor sex-related charges. The most recent known series of sex-related arrests in Meridian Hill Park took place in 2019, when at least 14 of the arrests took place.

An attorney representing one of the arrested men told the Blade that undercover plain-clothes Park Police officers were posing as men cruising for sex and appeared to be enticing the men into masturbating or prompting them to touch the officer, thinking they were interacting with a willing sex partner but engaging in action resulting in their arrest.

LGBTQ activists familiar with this type of arrest have said that while they don’t condone public sex in places like Meridian Hill Park, most of the alleged sexual activity takes place at night in hidden places such as behind thick underbrush where the general public would not observe such activity.   

The Blade couldn’t immediately determine whether additional sex-related arrests have taken place in Meridian Hill Park since 2019.

“Pruden faces a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years for each assault count and a three-year statutory maximum sentence for impersonating a federal officer,” the Justice Department statement says. It says the hate crimes sentencing enhancement handed down by the grand jury increases the possible sentence for the assault counts.

“Before spraying the men, Pruden pretended to be a Park Police officer, shined a flashlight in the victims’ faces and gave the victims police-style directives,” the DOJ statement says. It points out that the indictment charges Pruden with assaulting four of the five victims because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation.

WUSA 9 TV and the Daily Mail have reported that Pruden is a former elementary school teacher in Maryland, but the two news outlets did not say how they obtained that information or where in Maryland Pruden worked as a teacher.

Pruden, who had been held in custody in Norfolk since his arrest on July 14, pleaded not guilty to the charges against him at a virtual Zoom arraignment hearing on July 20 organized by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington.

Without objection from prosecutors with the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey agreed to a request by Pruden’s court-appointed defense attorney, Alfred Guillaume, that he be released into the custody of a third-party guardian while awaiting trial. Guillaume said Pruden’s mother would act as the guardian and Pruden would be staying at his mother’s residence in Norfolk.

Guillaume, acting on Pruden’s behalf, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Frederick Yett, one of two prosecutors assigned to the case, agreed to a series of restrictions placed on Pruden as a condition for his release that were recommended by the court’s Pretrial Services office.

Among the conditions, which were approved by the judge, are that Pruden must stay away from all individuals he is accused of assaulting and refrain from taking any action that could be interpreted as an attempt to threaten or influence any witnesses in the case.

Other conditions require that he not travel out of the state of Virginia without getting permission from the court; that he remains indoors at his Norfolk residence between the hours of 8:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.; that he submits to location monitoring; if recommended by the Pretrial Services office, he must enter a substance abuse counseling program; and he must confer regularly with the Pretrial Service office staff.

In response to a question asked by Magistrate Judge Harvey about his educational background, Pruden said he has a master’s degree in education. Media outlets have reported that Pruden previously has worked as an elementary school teacher in Maryland, but no specific details have surfaced regarding the school where he taught.  

His next court appearance for a status hearing, which the judge said will also be virtual through Zoom, was scheduled for July 28.