An Athol man proven in surveillance footage on the riot on the Capitol battering police with a riot defend will spend greater than 5 years in jail for his position within the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
“It was just fun, exciting, enjoyable. I mean, we were all — we were just having a relaxed, nice time,” stated Vincent Gilespie throughout his jury trial in December of 2021, as transcribed in a prosecution sentencing memo filed on March 31.
On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell in federal court docket in Washington, D.C., sentenced Gillespie to 68 months in jail, which quantities to 5 years and eight months, to be adopted by three years of supervised launch. Gillespie additionally has to pay a $25,000 nice and $2,000 in restitution.
A D.C. jury convicted him on Dec. 23, 2002, on prices of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers; civil dysfunction; partaking in bodily violence in a restricted constructing or grounds; and disorderly conduct in a Capitol constructing. The feds say that greater than 1,000 individuals have been arrested within the investigation into the Jan. 6 riots.
Gillespie was arrested on Feb. 18, 2022. Court paperwork present that investigators tracked him down as a result of he was carrying a black hooded sweatshirt sporting a brand for the western Massachusetts fitness center “Berkshire Nautilus” in footage from the riot.
Other suggestions got here in after the photographs had been launched from at the very least six witnesses together with a former neighbor and individuals who work at native companies Gillespie had frequented.
At trial, prosecutors say that from between 4:11 p.m. and 4:26 p.m. on Jan. 6, Gillespie, 61, labored his manner by way of his fellow rioters within the Lower West Terrace of the capitol to push, shove, yell at and struggle with law enforcement officials till he reached to the road of officers defending that sector’s exterior door to the capitol.
There, Gillespie grabbed a police defend and used it to ram the police earlier than grabbing a Metropolitan Police Department sergeant by the arm and making an attempt to tablet him towards the mob as he yelled such phrases as “traitor” and “treason” on the police.
In the protection’s sentencing memo, attorneys argue that he traveled in a single day from dwelling “without any concrete plan except to attend the former President’s rally and maybe do a little sightseeing.” They stated that he had no prior felony document and merely “mimicked other rioters” on the scene and due to that requested for a sentencing vary of between 30 and 37 months in jail.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”