Rhode Island wind farm forum gets heated; police seek person of interest

A wind farm forum in Newport, Rhode Island, got a little heated last week when a man intervened after attendees raised concerns about offshore wind turbine structures, one of which recently fell apart 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 claimed to be a fiberglass shard that washed ashore from the damaged turbine.

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

People in the crowd could be heard saying, “Wow” and “This is a democracy.”

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The same man is then seen getting up out of his chair again holding what appeared to be an index card and leaning toward the same woman, who was still speaking.

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

“Disrespect, sir,” a person in the crowd is heard saying.

In another clip, as a different woman attempted to stand at a podium and speak, the man walked over and snatched the microphone, unplugged it and placed it behind the panel of speakers in the front of the room.

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The Newport Energy and Environment Commission’s video of the hearing showed a slide that listed the panelists as state Sen. Dawn Euer, Brown University professor Stephen Porder and Save The Bay Executive Director Topher Hamblett.

At the end of the clip shared by police, one of the panelists told one of the women, “You guys set us back a half-hour after your outburst, and you’re leaving early?”

The video was taken down from the police department’s Facebook page Wednesday. Police told Fox News Digital the man in the video has been identified, though no arrests have been made.

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When asked what, if any, charges the man would face, police said there was no further information to add, noting it’s an ongoing investigation.

The Newport Buzz, a local blog, shared on X that less than 12 hours after it discovered the man from the meeting was “featured prominently” 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 site shows Whitehouse shaking hands with a woman, though the internet archive shows a different picture.

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The snapshot taken from the senator’s campaign site Wednesday shows Whitehouse bumping fists 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 from the meeting, who is looking at the camera.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Whitehouse’s office seeking information about why the image was swapped and what the man’s connection is to the senator. Whitehouse’s office did not immediately respond to the inquiries.

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

Vineyard Wind said in a statement the blade was damaged, and it was conducting a cleanup effort on the southern-facing shores of the island as hundreds of pieces of large and small debris washed up.

The Nantucket Harbormaster closed all south shore beaches because of the debris, though walking was permitted under caution.

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

In October, Vineyard Wind boasted of a $1.2 billion “first-of-its-kind tax equity 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.” 

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

FOX Weather contributed to this report.