Video from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol shows Anthony Mastanduno, 60, clad in camouflage, assaulting police with a baton as the mob forced its way through a tunnel, according to the Justice Department.
Police arrested Mastanduno in Asheville, North Carolina, on Wednesday. The Rutherford County man faces two felony counts for civil disorder and assaulting police, along with six misdemeanors.
“Videos and still images taken by others in the crowd showed Mastanduno at around 4:30 p.m. as he threw an object toward officers, utilized a telescoping baton to strike at officers in the tunnel, and pushed into the tunnel with a stolen police shield,” the Justice Department said.
Investigators have arrested more than 1,106 people for their involvement in the attack on the Capitol. The charges have ranged from entering the Capitol without permission, to serious offenses like assaulting police and seditious conspiracy.
In Mastanduno’s case, federal investigators allege he was one of the first to enter the Capitol, just four minutes after the building was breached. Investigators said he was “at the front of a line of rioters who overwhelmed officers in the Crypt.”
Mastanduno then left the Capitol and joined another group of rioters fighting with police to get through a tunnel into the building, the DOJ said. That’s when he was caught on video assaulting police with a telescoping baton and using a stolen shield to push back officers, according to investigators.
FBI investigators said they began investigating Mastanduno after agents arrested another man, Glenn Wes Lee Croy of Colorado Springs, Colorado. When they searched Croy’s phone, they found a picture of Mastanduno wearing a camouflage jacket and a red hat embroidered with “Trump 2020 Keep America Great!”
Mastanduno was in the Capitol rotunda posing next to a bust of Václav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic, according to the DOJ.
Crowd-sourced investigations called Mastanduno “#ShieldGrampy,” according to investigators. That was “due to his age and his use of a stolen police shield to assault MPD (Metropolitan Police Department) officers at the entrance to the tunnel,” according to an FBI statement of facts in the case.
Surveillance video from inside the tunnel shows Mastanduno at the front of the line of rioters as they attacked police officers in the tunnel, according to images shared by investigators.
If convicted of assaulting police, Mastanduno could face years in federal prison.
Rioters who have pleaded guilty to assaults on officers have faced sentences in prison of at least three years, but some have received much stiffer sentences.
A Pennsylvania man convicted earlier this year of pepper-spraying police was sentenced to 14 years in prison.