A grand jury has indicted a Tennessee Walking Horse trainer for allegedly using his truck to assault a woman demonstrating at a Tennessee Walking Horse in May.

An indictment handed down July 7 by a grand jury in Maury County, Tennessee, accuses Jamie B. Lawrence of Vineland, Alabama, of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly using his truck to threaten Teresa Bippen, president of Friends of Sound Horses and a protestor at the Columbia Spring Jubilee Horse Show on May 30. Bippen and others were demonstrating against the practice of soring, the deliberate injury to a horse’s feet and legs to achieve an exaggerated gait.

The indictment states that Lawrence allegedly “did unlawfully and intentionally or knowingly by use of a deadly weapon, to-wit: a truck, cause Teresa Bippen to fear imminent bodily injury by driving said truck in the director of Teresa Bippen.”

“The citizens’ protest of the ‘Big Lick’ cruelty was to educate spectators about the pain and abuse these horses suffer in the name of family entertainment,” Bippen opined. “The action of the Maury County Grand Jury and law enforcement sends the message that citizens exercising their constitutional rights cannot be threatened