A retired firefighter who threw a fire extinguisher at police officers during the storming of the United States Capitol was sentenced Tuesday to more than four years in prison.
Robert Sanford struck two police officers over the head with the fire extinguisher he threw when he stormed into the Capitol with a mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021. He also threw an orange traffic cone at a police sergeant congressional.
“Sanford also used obscenities and insults at police officers on the lower west terrace, calling them ‘traitors,'” prosecutor Janani Iyengar said in a court filing.
One of the policemen hit by the fire extinguisher had a bump and swelling on his head; the other suffered a headache and went to a hospital for a medical examination, prosecutors said.
US District Judge Paul Friedman sentenced Sanford to four years and four months in prison followed by three years of probation, according to a court document posted online. Federal prosecutors had recommended a sentence of five years and 11 months behind bars.
Sanford, 57, of Boothwyn, Pennsylvania, worked as a firefighter for 26 years, retiring in 2020. A fire extinguisher is “an instrument with which he was extremely familiar and should have known how much damage it can cause,” a prosecutor wrote. .
Sanford traveled to Washington DC with some friends from Pennsylvania on a bus tour organized by the conservative activist group Turning Point USA. He listened to speeches at Trump’s rally before joining the crowd that marched on Capitol Hill and disrupted the joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Trump.
Sanford was arrested on January 14, 2021 and has been incarcerated since pleading guilty last September to assaulting, resisting, or impeding police officers by means of a dangerous weapon.
