“It messed up everybody’s grass,” said Kiara Franco, who lives next door to Clark. She filmed part of the altercation while calling the police.

Clark collected several city trash cans from nearby homes and arranged them in a roadblock to prevent people from driving onto his lawn. Then Abusaft arrived.

He said he was trying to check on some people he hadn’t been able to reach by phone. Because of the downed trees, Abusaft said he had spent 45 minutes driving through town when he hit Clark’s roadblock.

“On a normal day you can’t close a sidewalk or a public road, let alone stop it when you know we’re going through an emergency,” Abusaft said.

He got out of his truck to move trash cans and got into the fight that led to Clark being charged with assault.

“He would pick up the trash cans and move them out of the way,” Clark said. “I put them back together. “You can’t pass by, man.” Suddenly he took the trash can and lifted it up, pushed me with it and hit my legs.”

Clark told a similar story to police. In a written statement, he said Abusaft grabbed the trash can “and pushed it into my abdomen and legs.”

Franco and Clark’s wife, Annie, supported Clark’s story.

“First he threw the trash can into Shine,” Franco said. “They basically just kept going back and forth. The man got into his truck. They were standing in front of the bins and he went and started pushing the bins with his truck so they got out of the way and then he just went around.”

In an interview, Abusaft denied hitting Clark with the trash can and said he told Clark he had no right to block the road or sidewalk.

He pointed out that the dumpster lock was installed on a neighbor’s property, not Clark’s, and said he told Clark several times that he would drive around the tree without going over Clark’s yard.

“I said, ‘I’m not going to touch your yard, but I have to go around this tree,'” Abusaft explained. He tried to move the trash cans, but Clark kept stopping him.