He protested in a clown suit outside a restaurateur’s home. The owner pulled a gun on him

It’s 11:45 on a Tuesday morning, and a 53-year-old man in rainbow wig and multi-patterned clown suit with a Nikon camera around his neck is busily posting leaflets on palm trees and poles on a wide street in Hancock Park. Then an older man steps out of a nearby house and walks toward him with a long, double-barreled gun.

In the ensuing minutes, one of the men would end up on the ground and the other in handcuffs. This is the story of how things got to that point.

Mark Gallegos is a professional protester. He has been practicing his craft since around 2006, when he vented outrage against the Roman Catholic Church outside churches in Pomona, Orange County and downtown Los Angeles. He had a personal stake in that one, given that he’d been sexually abused by a priest when he was a child, Gallegos said.

Since then, clients have hired him to name and shame employers and businesses in various fields — food service, the garment industry, construction workers.

Recently, he was hired by former workers for Real Food Daily, a vegan restaurant with two locations, one in Pasadena and another in West Hollywood.

Paul Boettcher looks out the window of his Ye Olde King’s Head restaurant in Santa Monica in 2011. Boettcher, owner of multiple Southern California restaurants, was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon after a confrontation with a protester outside his home in Hancock Park in January. Last month, the protester, Mark Gallegos, sued Boettcher for battery, assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

The organic vegan restaurants are owned and managed by Paul Boettcher, a Hancock Park resident who has run restaurants with his daughter Adaline Hobbs, including a Silver Lake vegan spot they briefly operated called Junkyard Dog. Boettcher also owns the British pub-style restaurant Ye Olde King’s Head in Santa Monica and Busby’s West, also in Santa Monica.

Gallegos was hired by frustrated former employees of Boettcher, he said.

“Numerous employees have been screwed and not paid,” Gallegos alleged.

Court records show that a former employee of Real Food Daily sued the restaurant in 2023 for allegedly failing to pay her for overtime worked. The employee, Sheridan Covington, said there was a company policy in place to “disproportionately round down” the number of hours worked when calculating pay. Covington also claimed that employees had to work through their meal breaks. Sometimes employees would work more than 10 hours in a shift and not be paid overtime, the lawsuit claims.

In October, a video by a passing driver captured Gallegos as he was protesting outside Real Food Daily’s Pasadena location, wearing the multicolored clown suit he sometimes wore to work and holding a sign saying “Real Food Daily refuses to pay vendor.”

But after protesting at Real Food Daily’s locations for a while, Gallegos decided to up the ante.

“Employees were telling me they were owed thousands and thousands of dollars,” Gallegos said. That’s why he decided to break with his usual routine of demonstrating outside businesses and bring the heat to Boettcher’s neighborhood.

On Jan. 23, Gallegos dressed up in the clown outfit and headed over to Boettcher’s house on South Plymouth Boulevard. He began to post fliers on poles and palm trees about Boettcher’s alleged mistreatment of his workers.

Gallegos said he stayed on the sidewalk and did not venture onto Boettcher’s property.

“It was pure, on the sidewalk, 1st Amendment rights. No loud music, no yelling. We’re following guidelines. Especially around the home, you can’t be disturbing the peace,” he said.

Despite that, Gallegos said, Boettcher came out of his house with the long gun and pointed it directly in his face.

“I have this man charging toward me with a high-powered rifle and he cocked it he said he was gonna shoot me, kill me, something to that extent. It makes me tremble and shiver [to remember],” he said.

Video recorded on a camera Gallegos was wearing around his neck shows Boettcher approach the protester while carrying the gun under his right arm. Boettcher appears to point the gun toward Gallegos in the video.

“I thought I was dead. I just closed my eyes,” he said.

Video shows a man with a weapon removing fliers from trees and then being taken into custody by police.

Gallegos said Boettcher then went inside, came back out and hit him with a stick, knocking him over. The video from Gallegos’ camera shows Boettcher approach Gallegos a second time and bump into him, at which time the lens turns upward, showing only the blue sky. Boettcher does not appear to be holding a stick or gun during this interaction.

A neighbor called the police.

Another video shot by Gallegos shows Boettcher walking out of his home with his hands on his head, then backward toward officers who had blocked off the street. He kneels to the ground in the video so officers can take him into custody.

He was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, authorities said, and later released on $30,000 bail.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office sent the case to the Los Angeles city attorney’s office to consider misdemeanor charges against Boettcher, though no charges have been filed. The city attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case.

Gallegos sued Boettcher for battery, assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress last month. His attorney, Hugo Salazar, said the key issue is the freedom to peacefully protest.

“We filed civil suit due to the assault and battery that were made against Gallegos for exercising his 1st Amendment right to protest on a public street,” Salazar said.

The arrest is the latest legal issue for Boettcher, who, on top of being sued by the one employee, is also suing his daughter Hobbs in Los Angeles Superior Court. He claims Hobbs teamed up with her husband to embezzle at least $500,000 from Real Food Daily over 6½ years working for the business. The lawsuit claims more than $1 million in total may have been stolen.

Boettcher claimed in the suit, filed in September, that he became aware of the embezzlement and confronted his daughter and her husband, Thomas Hobbs, who both resigned their positions “leaving a teetering business in their wake.”

The suit argues that the embezzlement by the couple is the reason the company is in tough financial straits, struggling to pay vendors and employees. The Hobbses have not responded to the allegations yet in court.

Boettcher said in his complaint that after leaving the company, Hobbs and her husband maligned Real Food Daily on social media and encouraged former employees to file lawsuits against the company.

Boettcher did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did his daughter.