The student who dramatically shut down Milo Yiannopolous’ speech at DePaul University last night has claimed the controversial speaker’s views on race and feminism are to blame for the Charleston shootings – and has vowed to continue halting “hate speech”.

Yiannopoulos’ talk was abruptly halted when a group of activists stormed the stage and allegedly threatened to punch the speaker in the face. The protesters refused to leave the stage and snatched the microphone from the interviewer’s hand during the event about free speech.

Student and church minister Edward Ward (pictured top, and center in video below), along with a female accomplice, chanted against Donald Trump and screamed pro-Bernie Sanders statements in front of a crowd of hundreds. Speaking exclusively to Heat Street, he said: “This is not a point of shutting down free speech, it’s the point of shutting down hate speech” and promised to “continue to do so long as there’s anything that’s happening that threatens my safety”.

He added: “When I went, I was open to listen to what was being said, I was open to listen and try to understand. “But when it’s coming from a point of ignorance, when you make these blatant statements about feminists, when you make blatant statements about the LGBTQ community, when you make statements about black people – then it becomes a problem, because when you use this kind of hatred people like us end up dead. “You get Charleston. These are what you get as a result of his type of speech and rhetoric.”

The political science graduate also claimed: “You have a bunch of white people who wanna actually say a bunch of racist s*** and that’s not okay.” His as-yet unnamed female accomplice claimed on stage she had been silenced “for 200 years”.