Man Who Beat Officer With Flagpole Throughout Capitol Riot Is Sentenced to Over 4 Years in Jail

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Arkansas truck driver who beat a police officer with a flagpole hooked up to an American flag in the course of the U.S. Capitol riot was sentenced Monday to greater than 4 years in jail.

Peter Francis Stager struck the Metropolitan Police Division officer together with his flagpole a minimum of 3 times as different rioters pulled the officer, head first, into the group outdoors the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The bruised officer was amongst greater than 100 cops injured in the course of the riot.

Stager additionally stood over and screamed profanities at one other officer, who was significantly injured when a number of different rioters dragged him into the mob and beat him, based on federal prosecutors.

After the beatings, Stager was captured on video saying, “Each single a kind of Capitol legislation enforcement officers, demise is the treatment. That’s the solely treatment they get.”

U.S. Decide Rudolph Contreras sentenced Stager to 4 years and 4 months in jail, based on a spokesperson for the prosecutors’ workplace.

Stager, 44, of Conway, Arkansas, pleaded responsible in February to a felony cost of assaulting police with a harmful weapon.

Prosecutors had advisable a jail sentence of six years and 6 months.

Stager assaulted the officer throughout one of the violent episodes of Jan. 6 — a battle between rioters and police guarding an entrance to the Capitol constructing in a tunnel on the Decrease West Terrace.

“Stager joined a chronic, multi-assailant assault on cops, which resulted in accidents to the officers,” they wrote. “Stager himself wielded a flagpole and used it to strike at a susceptible officer, who, mendacity face down in a mob of rioters had no technique of defending himself.”

Stager’s truck driving job took him to Washington, D.C., on the day earlier than then-President Donald Trump’s “Cease the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. Stager stayed in a single day to attend Trump’s rally after delivering a load of produce, a call that he’ll remorse for the remainder of his life, his lawyers said in a court filing.

Stager’s attorneys say he tried to assist others within the crowd who have been injured after the riot erupted. Shocked by what he noticed, Stager had “reached his breaking level” and was “seeing pink” when he picked up a flag on the bottom, they stated.

“As soon as the adrenaline wore off, Mr. Stager instantly referred to as his spouse to inform her he was horrified by his actions and that he was going to show himself in upon returning to Arkansas,” his attorneys wrote.

Florida resident Mason Courson was sentenced in June to 4 years and 9 months in jail. Michigan resident Justin Jersey was sentenced in February to 4 years and three months in jail. Michigan development employee Logan Barnhart was sentenced in April to 3 years in jail. Georgia enterprise proprietor Jack Wade Whitton is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 16.

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