AUBURN — Suspended lawyer and candidate for district attorney Seth Carey was issued no-trespassing paperwork Monday afternoon after an incident at Cumberland Farms at 119 Center St.
Officers Andrew Shute and Thomas Ellis responded to a disturbance call at 2:43 p.m. Monday and found Carey placing election signs on Cumberland Farms’ private property without permission.
The store manager and several employees asked him to remove the signs, and, according to the incident report, Carey became “nasty.”
Employees at Cumberland Farm in Auburn asked Seth Carey to not put campaign signs on private property Monday afternoon. (Anthony Russell photo)
The Cumberland Farms manager told Carey to call the convenience store’s corporate office to get permission and “he started to freak out,” according to the incident report.
A Cumberland Farms employee said Carey started to come at her as if he were going to attack her. She then asked the store manager that Carey be “trespassed from the property.”
Anthony Russell, a regular customer at the Cumberland Farms, said he witnessed the employees ask Carey to remove his signs.
“He was a complete jerk to the employees, who were nothing but polite, and I went over to see if they were OK,” Russell said.
Carey was reportedly walking away as Russell started heading toward the employees. Carey then heard one of the employees on the telephone calling police.
Russell said Carey then “comes over and says if we touch his signs, he’s gonna cause a scene.”
Russell said that throughout the encounter, Carey was acting “super jumpy,” and that it was kind of intimidating.
When Russell told Carey he could not place his signs on company-owned property, things got “nasty.”
“He started to mimic my voice and mock me for wearing skinny jeans in an attempt to degrade me because I’m gay,” Russell said. “The only thing he did was piss me off.”
Auburn lawyer Seth Carey conducts a press conference in April on the steps of the Androscoggin County Building in Auburn. (Sun Journal file photo)
Once the police showed up, according to the incident report, Carey was issued no-trespassing paperwork and took down the signs with no further issue.
A protection from abuse order was granted against Carey in April by one of his former clients, a woman who claimed he subjected her to unlawful sexual contact.
Arguments presented by Maine bar lawyers and evidence from the protection from abuse order led to Carey’s being suspended from practicing law later that month.
He is still on the June 12 ballot for district attorney in Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties.
Carey has been suspended from practicing law several times, first in 2009 and most recently in 2016.
In addition to suspensions, he has also been reprimanded for failing to meet a lawyer’s “standards of care and judgment.”
Editor’s note: Carey issued this statement the day this story appeared in print:
“The store employee and her friend projected their hostility on me; anyone who knows me, including the actual unbiased eyewitnesses will tell you the truth; that I am the most chill, calm person they know, but I also do not back down when I am aggressively confronted by those abusing their power.”
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