Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday said allegations that the co-owner of Staten Island’s defiant “autonomous zone” bar rammed a sheriff with his car were “extraordinarily disturbing.”
“I think his actions are extraordinarily disturbing. I think they’re disgusting,” de Blasio said of Danny Presti, the co-owner of Mac’s Public House in Grant City, during a City Hall press briefing.
Presti was arrested Sunday for allegedly driving into a sheriff’s sergeant who was trying to apprehend him for illegally keeping his bar open in violation of COVID-19 restrictions.
“There’s no excuse for doing something that might threaten the life of a law enforcement officer,” the mayor said.
Presti was busted just after midnight Sunday for allegedly driving a turquoise Jeep into 30-year-old New York City Sheriff’s Sgt. Kenneth Matos — breaking his legs and leaving him clinging to the hood for around 300 feet before finally being stopped by a sheriff’s car.
The bar owner rammed into the officer “intentionally and with depraved indifference to human life,” a criminal complaint charges.
Presti — who had been nabbed earlier in the week for keeping his pub open in a coronavirus hot spot zone — was slapped with 10 charges Sunday, including third-degree assault with intent to cause physical injury, menacing, reckless driving, resisting arrest and unlawfully fleeing a police officer.





De Blasio said Presti “should pay very, very serious consequences for what he did.”
“There are serious charges,” de Blasio added. “He needs to suffer the appropriate consequences for what he did.”






