Queens woman Kathleen Cassillo who drove through Manhattan BLM protest turns down plea deal

By Edward Era Barbacena

A white woman from Queens accused of driving through a Manhattan Black Lives Matter protest a year ago has refused a plea deal — choosing to stand trial because she insists she had been under attack.

Kathleen Casillo, 52, was caught in shocking video footage as she drove her black BMW sedan through the protest against ICE detentions in Midtown on Dec. 11 last year.

It shows her stopped at 39th Street and Third Avenue with protesters in front of her car — seconds before she floors it, with people screaming and rushing to help those left crumpled on the ground.

Casillo insisted at the time that she was felt under attack from protesters who were screaming abuse and banging on her car. She was released within hours with a desk ticket, The Post noted at the time.

On Wednesday, she appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court where she was offered a plea deal of just six days community service and a suspended license for a year, DailyMail.com said.

But she turned down the offer — preferring to take her case to a jury, the outlet noted.

Protesters gathered outside the court, even bringing a TV to play footage of the incident, photos by amNewYork show.

Some chanted “Black Lives Matter!” while others carried signs saying that “Kathleen Casillo is Kyle Rittenhouse,” the teen gunman recently acquitted of all charges over the deadly shooting at BLM protests last year in Kenosha Wisconsin.

“Kathleen Casillo drove her car at top speed through a crowd of human beings. I was one of those human beings—I never saw her coming,” Roque Rodriguez told the outlet outside court.

“She hit me flush from behind and set my body flying and flipping through the air and she kept driving.

“It’s white supremacy that allowed Kathleen to believe she had the right to end the lives of anyone that got in her way, especially BLM protesters,” Rodriguez insisted.

She also blasted Assistant District Attorney Andrew Mercer for the lenient handling of the case, as well as not following up with seven of the nine people allegedly hit.

“He did no due diligence, and instead assumed that Kathleen did not have bad intentions and that no one else was seriously harmed,” Rodriguez claimed.

Tabitha Howell said that she was left with “five bulging discs in my back and a traumatic brain injury.”

“It’s one thing to face physical recovery. It’s another to try to process what happened mentally and emotionally,” Howell said.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office insisted to the paper that it “has attempted to speak with every victim in this case.”

Casillo is due back in court on Jan. 28.