WATERVILLE — Kyle Long, a Waterville man who made national headlines after driving cross-country to confront Google executives over the removal of his YouTube video, was arrested in his hometown this week.

Long was taken into custody about 7:45 a.m. Thursday after he showed up at an apartment complex where his wife was staying with relatives, made loud demands and then smashed the back window of her SUV with a rock, according to Deputy Chief Bill Bonney, of the Waterville police.

He broke the car window “when he wasn’t met at the door,” which he had been banging on, Bonney said, and then “took off on foot.”

Long, 33, was charged with violating a protection-from-abuse order and criminal mischief and is being held without bail at the Kennebec County jail. His wife, Samantha Long, had obtained the protection order against him earlier this week, according to Bonney.

“Any person can go to a judge and fill out a statement asking for a protection-from-abuse order to get away from an abusive situation,” Bonney said. “That’s what the wife did. A judge looked at it, found reason to believe that what she was saying was true and that she was in danger and issued the order.”

Violating a protection-from-abuse order and criminal mischief are both class D crimes, punishable by up to one year in county jail and a $2,000 fine.

Kyle Long was charged with domestic violence assault, also a class D crime, in 2015 and sentenced to 364 days in jail as a result. Bonney declined to comment on whether Samantha Long was a victim in the incident that led to Kyle Long’s 2015 arrest or specify whether the 2015 case was connected with Kyle Long’s recent arrest.

“That was a couple of years ago, so no (it’s not related),” Bonney said before adding, “It’s a complicated situation, just like any domestic violence situation. To say that it isn’t related probably isn’t accurate, because it’s a course of conduct from a person over a period of time.”

Samantha Long was allegedly the one who deleted her husband’s YouTube account, prompting his 3,300-mile drive to Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. Kyle Long allegedly had been under the impression that YouTube administrators had removed his content from the site and wanted to meet with them.

“I just didn’t tell him it was me taking it down because I didn’t want him losing his (expletive) in front of my kids,” she told BuzzFeed News. “He was mad initially, but I said I didn’t know what happened.”

The Waterville man was arrested on a charge of criminal threatening March 12 after Mountain View police received tips about his activity from Waterville police and the Iowa State Patrol, which reported two run-ins with him in the days leading up to his arrest. Officers located him en route with three baseball bats in his car trunk and driving directions to the town in which Google is headquartered. The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office in California later announced that it was dropping all charges against him on March 16.

“Mr. Long’s behavior was disturbing but did not meet the elements of a chargeable crime,” Sean Webby, public communications officer for the district attorney’s office, told the Morning Sentinel at the time.

Kyle Long’s father, Kevin Long, told the San Francisco Chronicle that his son planned to collect money from YouTube page views in order to end world hunger. He also noted that his son has bipolar disorder and was experiencing a manic episode at the time he made the video.

Records show a number of past convictions of Kyle Long, on charges including refusal to submit to arrest and violating conditions of release. He also was convicted for second-degree vehicular manslaughter as a 16-year old, after a crash killed a passenger in his car — a high school classmate —nearly 17 years ago in Connecticut, according to the Hartford Courant.

Multiple attempts by Morning Sentinel reporters to contact the Longs were unsuccessful.

Meg Robbins can be contacted at 861-9239 or at:

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