FREEPORT, Maine — The Cumberland County district attorney’s office has declined to pursue charges filed against a Westbrook man — the son of a man who died in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 — who was arrested during a 9/11 ceremony in Freeport.
James M. Roux Jr., 29, is the son of James M. Roux, a Portland lawyer, Bowdoin College graduate and U.S. Army veteran who died when United Airlines Flight 175 from Portland crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
The younger Roux was taken into custody by Freeport police the morning of Sept. 11, 2015, and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after allegedly disrupting a ceremony honoring victims of the attacks and first responders at the Freeport public safety building.
Freeport police Lt. Susan Nourse said on the day of the arrest that after Roux began shouting personal views and refused to leave, officers handcuffed him and took him to Cumberland County Jail. He was released later that day.
James Roux Jr. has declined to speak to the Bangor Daily News. However, in a Sept. 22 letter published by the Portland Press Herald, he described himself as “a pacifist and a patriot,” and said that he objected to the ceremony’s “program of military force” and to its “exploitation of 9/11 victims, such as my father.”
“I respect the rights of all at the ceremony to express their views in the right setting,” he said in the letter. “I am disturbed, however, that this public event, on public property, with forced student attendance, presented only one side and promoted certain political views, rather than simply remembering the lives and mourning the loss of so many innocents.”
Assistant District Attorney Michael Madigan said that he chose not to pursue the charges after they were submitted by Freeport police to the district attorney’s office. Madigan declined to comment further.