A North Carolina guy who stormed the U.S. Capitol whilst looking forward to trial for capturing an adolescent within the head used to be sentenced on Tuesday to greater than 3 years in jail for attacking cops with a flagpole all over the insurrection.
Matthew Jason Beddingfield, 22, used to be unfastened on pretrial unlock for an tried homicide fee in Johnston County, North Carolina, when he joined the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Out of doors the Capitol, Beddingfield flashed a Nazi-style salute after attacking cops with a pole hooked up to an American flag, in step with federal prosecutors.
U.S. District Pass judgement on Carl Nichols sentenced Beddingfield to a jail time period of 3 years and two months adopted via two years of supervised unlock, in step with a spokesperson for the U.S. Legal professional’s place of work for the District of Columbia.
Prosecutors had really helpful a jail sentence of 3 years and 6 months for Beddingfield, who pleaded responsible in February to 1 depend of assaulting, resisting or impeding police.
Beddingfield, then 20 and dwelling in Middlesex, North Carolina, traveled to Washington, D.C., together with his father on Jan. 6 and attended then-President Donald Trump’s “Prevent the Thieve” rally. Leaving the rally, they separated as they approached the Capitol with a mob of Trump supporters.
At the West Plaza, Beddingfield attacked cops with a flagpole and threw a work of the pole at an officer after it broke.
“Beddingfield then confronted the Capitol and made a gesture (one this is often related to the Nazis), extending his arm and hand ahead and at an upward attitude,” a prosecutor wrote in a court docket submitting.
After coming into the Capitol, he joined different rioters in attacking a gaggle of cops in a hallway. Getting hit with a chemical irritant made him retreat. Coming into an place of work for then-Area Minority Chief Kevin McCarthy, Beddingfield washed his eyes in a ingesting fountain prior to he left the construction.
In August 2021, Beddingfield pleaded responsible to an attack fee for capturing a teenage boy in a Walmart car parking zone in North Carolina. Beddingfield used to be sentenced to 2 years of probation for the December 2019 capturing, which the teenager survived.
“From publicly to be had interviews given via Beddingfield’s father, it kind of feels that from the start, there used to be no dispute that Beddingfield shot his sufferer, a 17-year-old Hispanic male. The declare seems to be that Beddingfield shot the sufferer after Beddingfield used to be robbed,” assistant U.S. Legal professional Sean Murphy wrote in a submitting final 12 months.
An lawyer for Beddingfield has stated that phrases of his pretrial unlock within the North Carolina case allowed him to shuttle to Washington for the Jan. 6 rally.
FBI brokers discovered 8 weapons and over 2,000 rounds of ammunition once they searched Beddingfield’s circle of relatives house. Photographs discovered on Beddingfield’s telephone integrated swastikas, Hitler memes and others glorifying white supremacist ideologies, prosecutors stated. Messages at the telephone recommend he harbored “deep resentment” towards Black, Hispanic, Local American and LGBTQ other folks, in step with prosecutors.
“In one of the crucial messages and exchanges,” Murphy wrote, “Beddingfield unabashedly expresses his want that participants of the ones teams meet a violent finish and in others he expresses a want to inflict stated violence or loss of life at the identical.”
A couple of 12 months after the insurrection, Beddingfield posted a message on Instagram that stated, “I’d love to reclaim The us and it’s nice if a couple of of my peoples enemies are ‘harm’ within the procedure.”
Greater than 1,000 other folks were charged with federal crimes associated with the Capitol insurrection. Over 600 of them have pleaded responsible. Greater than 560 were sentenced, with over part receiving phrases of imprisonment starting from 3 days to 18 years.