Kelley Paul, wife of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), sought to clarify the details leading to her husband’s injury after he was attacked by a neighbor earlier in the month.
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The senator was mowing the grass on his Bowling Green property when his neighbor, Rene Boucher, 59, tackled him from behind. He sustained minor cuts to his nose and mouth and several broken ribs.
I appreciate all of the support from everyone. A medical update: final report indicates six broken ribs & new X-ray shows a pleural effusion
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) November 8, 2017
It was initially reported that the attack was inspired by a landscaping dispute, but neighbors and those closest to him disagreed. Senior adviser Doug Stafford said that the men had not spoken to each other in several years. He also denied that they were in a fight, saying, “it was a blindside, violent attack by a disturbed person. Anyone claiming otherwise is simply uninformed or seeking media attention.”
On Wednesday, Kelley wrote a commentary piece for CNNÂ criticizing the misinformation published about her husband’s injury. There, she explained that her husband and her neighbor had not spoken in a very long time:
The fact is, neither Rand nor I have spoken to the attacker in 10 years (since before his wife and children moved away) other than a casual wave from the car. Nobody in our family has, nor have we communicated with anyone in his family. With Rand’s travel to D.C. in the last seven years, he has rarely seen this man at all.
Kelley denounced certain publications for “[victimizing] Rand a second time as he struggles to recover, delighting in hateful headlines like ‘Not A Perfect Neighbor,’ and concocting theories about an ‘ongoing dispute,’ based on nothing more than speculation from an attention-seeking person with no knowledge of anything to do with us.”
Rare’s Jack Hunter wrote that it was “morally reprehensible” to try to use the senator’s politics and supposed “ongoing dispute” to justify the attack.
Kelley added that her husband would miss out on various Thanksgiving traditions this year because of the pain of his injuries, which include “six broken ribs, three displaced, pleural effusion and now pneumonia.”
“The average person takes 20,000 breaths a day. Since November 3, my husband, Rand Paul, has not taken a single one without pain,” Kelley wrote.
Boucher pleaded not guilty after being charged with fourth-degree assault. If convicted, he could face up to a year in jail.