Chaotic moments caught on camera at Rhode Island wind farm forum; police investigate

A wind farm forum in Newport, Rhode Island, got somewhat heated last week when a man intervened after attendees expressed concerns about offshore wind turbine structures, one of which recently collapsed and left debris in the ocean.

In a video shared on Facebook by the Newport Police Department, a woman is seen standing in front of the crowd wearing a pair of gloves and holding what she claims is a shard of fiberglass that washed ashore from the damaged wind turbine.

As she was showing the item, a man approached and took a bag belonging to the woman. He also grabbed a flat box containing other items before walking away with the bag, throwing it on the ground and returning to his seat.

You could hear people in the crowd saying, “Wow,” and “This is a democracy.”

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The same man is then seen getting up from his chair holding what appears to be an index card and leaning towards the same woman, who is still talking.

When the woman refused to take the card, the man grabbed the shard of fiberglass she was holding, missed, and inserted the card between the frame of the woman’s glasses and her face.

“Disrespectful, sir,” someone in the crowd is heard saying.

In another clip, as another woman attempted to stand at a podium and speak, the man approached, grabbed the microphone, unplugged it and placed it behind the speaker panel at the front of the room.

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Video of the hearing by the Newport Energy and Environment Commission showed a slide listing the speakers: Julia Livermore, deputy chief of the Division of Marine Fisheries; Nick Horton, organizer of the Climate Action Rhode Island “Yes to the Wind” campaign; and David Langlais of Iron Workers Local 37.

At the end of the video shared by police, one of the speakers said to one of the women: “You made us wait half an hour after your explosion, and you’re leaving early?”

The video was removed from the police department’s Facebook page on Wednesday.

Police told Fox News Digital that the man in the video has been identified, though no arrests have been made.

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When asked what charges the man would face, police said they had no further information to add, saying it was an ongoing investigation.

Local blog Newport Buzz shared on X that less than 12 hours after discovering that the man from the meeting was “featured” on the campaign website of U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., changes were made to the site.

The current photo on the senator’s campaign website shows Whitehouse shaking hands with a woman, although internet archives show a different image.

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The photo taken Wednesday at the senator’s campaign website shows Whitehouse fist-bumped with a woman wearing a hard hat and a person standing behind the senator also wearing a hard hat. Three people were not wearing hard hats in the photo, including Whitehouse and the man at the meeting, who is looking at the camera.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Whitehouse’s office for comment on why the images were exchanged and what the man’s connection to the senator is. Whitehouse’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Last month, large pieces of a damaged Vineyard Wind turbine blade continued to wash up on beaches along Nantucket’s south shore.

Vineyard Wind said in a statement that the blade was damaged and it was conducting a cleanup operation on the island’s southern shores as hundreds of pieces of debris, large and small, washed ashore.

The Nantucket Harbormaster closed all beaches on the south shore due to debris, although walking was allowed with precautions.

Vineyard Wind is a joint venture between foreign entities Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, which have built wind farms off the coast of Massachusetts. The company is a beneficiary of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the major domestic policy achievement of the Biden-Harris administration.

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In October, Vineyard Wind boasted of a $1.2 billion “first tax equity financing package” for commercial-scale offshore wind with three U.S.-based banks, calling it “the largest single-asset tax equity financing and the first for a commercial-scale offshore wind project.”

On-site construction of Vineyard Wind 1 began in late 2021 and completed the nation’s first offshore substation in July 2023. The 800 MW project is located 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard and is the first commercial-scale offshore wind project in the United States.

FOX Weather contributed to this report.