Man Who Struck Officer With Pole on Jan. 6 Sentenced to 6 Years in Prison

A North Carolina man who was declared a fugitive after being found guilty last year of assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was sentenced on Tuesday to six years in prison, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department said.

The man, David Joseph Gietzen, 31, of Sanford, N.C., was sentenced in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after being found guilty by a jury in August of five felonies and three misdemeanors. After he was convicted, he failed to report to prison to await sentencing and was declared a fugitive. He was arrested again in December.

On Jan. 6, according to prosecutors, he appeared to grab a U.S. Capitol Police officer "by the throat or face mask" and to strike another with a pole.

The sentence was confirmed by Patty Hartman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. She said that Mr. Gietzen was also ordered to complete 100 hours of community service. His lawyer could not be immediately reached for comment on Tuesday evening.

Mr. Gietzen, a former programming engineer, traveled to Washington, D.C., with his brother from North Carolina on Jan. 5, 2021, to protest the results of the 2020 presidential election, court documents show.

Sometime before 2 p.m. the next day, he entered a restricted area at the Capitol, wearing protective gear that included a helmet, goggles and kneepads. He then moved to the front of the crowd, where he yelled an expletive at the police, prosecutors said.

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