Orem, Utah Mayor David Young spit on, punched by daughter of reporter he has beef with

The mayor of a Utah city was spit on and punched Tuesday following a city council meeting where the official called out his attacker’s reporter mother who wrote several articles about him.

David Young, the mayor of Orem, was standing outside of City Hall alongside several other people when Linnea Pugmire walked up to the group and began berating the official.

Pugmire then spits in Young’s direction, allegedly hitting both the mayor and an unknown woman, according to video of the incident obtained by Fox13, which shows the mayor putting his arms up to block his attacker.

Pugmire, who uses they/them pronouns, asked “Do you know who I am?”

It took Young a couple of seconds to realize he was standing in front of the daughter of a reporter he blasted moments before during the meeting.

In his remarks at the end of the session, Young called out the city’s local paper, The Daily Herald, and reporter Genelle Pugmire for articles written about the city council, himself and his family over the last several months.

“So I want to make some comments about a news article that Genelle Pugmire of the Daily Herald put on the front page of her newspaper last weekend. Now this non-news event was pushed to front page status on their highest readership weekend paper, ” Young said.

The article Young referred to reported that he was “embroiled in a lawsuit that hit him and his son Shawn Young with a $1 million judgment in 2022.”

“Now I wouldn’t make a big deal about this except it just keeps happening and happening and this keeps coming out of this paper and we just have to keep going along, and it’s just not right, and I just wanted to give you a few examples to help us understand this is not an isolated occurrence.”

Young, who is in his first term as mayor, went on to read the headlines from several different articles the paper featured, criticizing both the headlines and the body of the articles for making the stories more sound ominous than they really were.

“I know what I did tonight,” Young told Pugmire outside. “I’m sick and tired of being pushed around by your mother, I do now (know who you are) you look the same, I recognize you, you’re disgusting.”

The group, confronted by Pugmire, told them that their mother was making up things about the mayor, but Pugmire disagreed and claimed their mother was “doing her job.”

Young allegedly threatened Pugmire’s mother with court, even saying “she likes to write about court, she’s gonna find out about court.”

“Your mom went over the top in this article, she’s gone over the top on every article I pulled out,” Young says pointing a finger at Pugmire. “But the one this weekend where she talked about my wife.”

Pugmire allegedly threw a punch at Young striking him in the face before swinging at the woman standing next to the mayor.

Pugmire told police they were upset with Young “over personal concerns with family,” according to arrest documents obtained by Fox13.

One bystander who was with her family at the meeting because her father is on the council said her sister was the woman hit by Pugmire.

“I was terrified,” Michelle Lee told the outlet. “I’m with my mom and my sisters, the mayor, the city attorney, I don’t know what her plan was, she was so erratic and unhinged.”

“She charges towards me, she spits on me, she spits and hits the girl next to me,” Young told Fox13. “Obviously, when that happened, I wasn’t really happy about it, so I pushed her to try to get her away from us.”

“For elected officials in general, this should not be a thing,” he continued. “They should be able to speak, to have discussions, and have it be civil debate without fear of having someone jump out of a car and attack them.”

“We are deeply troubled by this incident because City Hall should be a place for civil civic dialogue where everyone feels safe and protected,” The City of Orem said in a statement to Fox13. “The security and safety of our public officials is a top priority. The City of Orem will continue to promote civility at all times and ask for the public to join us in this effort.”

Pugmire was arrested and brought to the Utah County Jail where they face multiple charges, including two third-degree felony counts of threatening elected officials and one count of assault, according to the outlet.