WASHINGTON — A Donald Trump fan who brought his teenage son with him when he attacked then-D.C. police officer Mike Fanone and another officer in the Capitol on Jan. 6 was sentenced Tuesday to more than seven years in prison.
Kyle Young, a 38-year-old HVAC worker from Iowa whose attorney said he had been “injected” with lies about the 2020 election and who had asked his Facebook followers to join him in the “stop the steel [sic]rally, pleaded guilty in May to a felony count of assaulting, resisting or obstructing officers. Young allowed that he used a strobe light to disorient the police, helped throw a large loudspeaker at the police, grabbed Fanone’s wrist when the DC cop was kidnapped by the Mafia, and made contact with another cop who had been kidnapped by the Mafia.
Young’s 86-month sentence matched what federal prosecutors have said requested in the case. They argued that Young took part in the attack on the lower western tunnel where “one of the most barbaric acts of violence” took place on January 6. As discovered by online sleuths, the government alleged that Young handed a taser to Danny Rodriguez, a MAGA fanatic who used it on Jan. 6 to electroshock Fanone in the neck.
Young, followed by his 16-year-old son, was close by when Rodriguez electrocuted Fanone, extensive video evidence shows.
“When Young saw Officer Fanone being pulled into the crowd, he deliberately moved toward the attack and joined at a crucial moment—stopping Officer Fanone’s wrist by pulling it away from his body seconds after the officer had been repeatedly tasered and under cries of ‘killing him with his own gun,'” federal prosecutors said. Young’s reluctance on Officer Fanone prevented the officer from protecting his service weapon at a time when the officer’s life was in danger and gave Young’s co-defendant Thomas Sibick an opening to forcibly remove Officer Fanone’s badge from his chest and his police radio from a pocket. on the front of his vest.”
Fanone’s badge was later buried in the woods behind Sibick’s backyard, the FBI have said before.
Young immediately turned to Fanone for his conviction Tuesday and apologized.
Fanone issued his own victim statement, including telling Young that he hopes he suffers in prison, leading to a tense moment in court. After Fanone’s statement, a supporter of the January 6 defendants called Fanone a “piece of shit”. There was a brief glance between them before the marshals escorted that man out.
Young had previously written to Judge Amy Berman Jackson that he regretted his actions.
“I still can’t believe I got myself and my son caught up in such terrible events,” Young wrote in a letter to the judge, adding that he was “very ashamed” and that he will “never do anything like it again.” .”
More than 850 people have been charged in the January 6 attack and more than 350 have pleaded guilty. The longest sentence of 10 years in federal prison went to an ex-NYPD cop who attacked a DC cop with a flagpole and knocked him to the ground, then lied in the stands about his behavior. Hundreds more arrests are yet to come.