State Sen. Marty Flynn has no regrets about getting into a verbal argument with some teenagers after a local high school football game.<\/p>\n
Video of part of the incident, circulated on social media, shows the Dunmore Democrat across the street and includes audio of him and youths cursing at each other. Republican Sharon Soltis Sparano of La Plume Twp., Flynn\u2019s opponent in the 22nd state Senate District race in Tuesday\u2019s election issued a statement critical of Flynn and questioning his judgment.<\/p>\n
The incident occurred after a Scranton Prep\/Valley View game Friday night when Flynn was walking with his 7-year-old daughter to their vehicle to leave. They passed by some young men who were screaming at each other, Flynn said in an interview Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Flynn said his daughter became scared and he told the youths to tone it down and watch their language and they then cursed at him. He put his daughter in his vehicle and then resumed the verbal clash with the youths, cursing at them. A former boxer, Flynn also told them he would knock them out.<\/p>\n
In describing the incident, Flynn said youths from two schools were fighting with each other, screaming back and forth and cursing. He told them to \u201cchill with the language\u201d and \u201cthey started screaming at us,\u201d with vulgarities. His daughter became afraid, \u201cso I just put her in the car, and that\u2019s when I was pissed off, screaming at them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next morning, he posted on Facebook a video he took at his home of him asking his daughter to recount the incident.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Flynn defended himself on the Sue Henry Show Podcast and said he would do the same thing again. The show\u2019s description of the episode: \u201cState Sen. Marty Flynn tells Sue Henry his side of a story about a confrontation involving teenagers and a few \u201cf\u201d bombs that flew Friday night after a high school football game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some opinions on social media included that Flynn exercised poor judgment and actions, especially for a state senator.<\/p>\n
\u201cListen, I\u2019m a father first, period,\u201d Flynn told The Times-Tribune. \u201cIf it happened tomorrow, the same thing could happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soltis Sparano\u2019s statement issued Tuesday called into question Flynn\u2019s behavior and claimed it fit a pattern of what she views as poor judgment exercised by him.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeadership means de-escalating conflict, protecting children, and exercising good judgment under pressure. It does not mean returning to confront teenagers, threatening them, and then telling the public you would do it again,\u201d Soltis Sparano said.<\/p>\n
She cited the following three incidents: In 2014, Flynn fired his own gun to defend himself and another legislator from would-be robbers while walking on a street in Harrisburg; in 2021, Flynn reported a theft of a loaded .357-caliber handgun from his unlocked vehicle parked in West Scranton outside of his home at the time; and in 2024, after Flynn \u201cbrake checked\u201d an erratic vehicle behind him on Interstate 81, the vehicle pulled into the left lane and a front seat passenger pointed a handgun at Flynn and smiled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"State Sen. Marty Flynn has no regrets about getting into a verbal argument with some teenagers after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2136,201,91334,182,883,803,139,28,50,178,180,179,802],"class_list":["post-316471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-dunmore","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-laplume-township","tag-local-news","tag-local-politics","tag-luzerne-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-politics","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-cvc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}