3 Milwaukee residents headed to DC event arrested in Kosciusko Co.

Three men who are members of a Milwaukee group that’s marching to the nation’s capital for a national commemoration of the 1963 civil rights March on Washington were arrested in northern Indiana after police said they were blocking traffic on a highway.

Frank David Sensabaugh, 30, Eric Ajala, 20, and Tory Lowe, 44, were arrested Wednesday on misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and obstruction of traffic, Indiana State Police said. Lowe was also arrested on a misdemeanor charge of resisting law enforcement, police said.

All three Milwaukee residents were taken to the Kosciusko County Jail and later released, The Times-Union of Warsaw reported. State police spokesman Sgt. Ted Bohner said all three are Black men.

Sensabaugh told the newspaper after their release that they planned to sue Kosciusko County.

“You treat Black people differently than you do white people,” he said. “So let’s play the game to see who loses more money.”

State police said in a news release that the county’s prosecutor “will review this case for all appropriate charges.”

Sensabaugh, who goes by the name Frank “Nitty” Sensabaugh, and Lowe are leaders of a group that’s marching nearly 800 miles from Milwaukee, to Washington, D.C., to join an Aug. 28 commemoration of the 57th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Indiana State Police said Sensabaugh, Ajala and Lowe were arrested about 6 p.m. near the city of Warsaw on U.S. 30 — a divided four-lane highway with a speed limit of 60 miles per hour — after dispatchers “began receiving calls of traffic backed up for several miles in the eastbound lanes of U.S. 30.”

State police said the protesters were “creating a dangerous situation for the group as well as traveling motorists” by walking at times in the right lane, with eight support vehicles traveling at walking speed.

Troopers spoke to Sensabaugh and explained that he and the others were creating a dangerous situation, but police said the group continued walking eastbound with the highway traffic, which state police said was backed up for about 7 miles.

Troopers again approached the marchers and explained that they could not continue traveling in the highway lane. The three were arrested following “multiple attempts to gain compliance,” police said.

Video that Lowe livestreamed on Facebook shows police speaking to him and eventually arresting him as someone can be heard saying, “Let him go,” and, “This is an unlawful arrest.”