The Texas man, who had been charged with misdemeanors for entering the Capitol, was arrested on a felony count of shooting at local law enforcement officers.
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Nathan Donald Pelham, of Greenville, Texas, was charged in Federal District Court in Washington last week for storming the Capitol. This week, he opened fire on local deputies, prosecutors said.
A Texas man who was facing charges for taking part in the storming of the Capitol opened fire on local sheriff’s deputies this week as they went to check on him on the day he was scheduled to surrender to the F.B.I., federal prosecutors said on Thursday.
The man, Nathan Donald Pelham, of Greenville, Texas, was arrested in connection with the shooting on Tuesday and was charged with an additional count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Last week, Mr. Pelham, 40, was charged in Federal District Court in Washington with four misdemeanors for illegally entering the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, through a door on the Senate side of the building and remaining inside for a little more than seven minutes. At the time, court papers say, Mr. Pelham was wearing a pair of goggles, a neck gaiter and a baseball hat emblazoned with a logo associated with the Proud Boys, a far-right group.
Two months later, he was stopped by border officials in Port Huron, Mich., trying to enter Canada. He eventually confessed that he had been inside the Capitol during the attack.
That prompted an investigation that was meant to culminate during the day on Monday with his surrender to the F.B.I., according to federal prosecutors in Texas. But that same evening, one of Mr. Pelham’s relatives called the sheriff’s office in Hunt County, Texas, and alerted deputies that Mr. Pelham was brandishing a gun.
When the deputies arrived to check on Mr. Pelham around 8:30 p.m., his daughter fled the house and shortly after, gunfire erupted inside, prosecutors said. About an hour later, Mr. Pelham walked out onto his porch and fired several shots at the deputies. Even though the deputies ordered him to put down his weapon, prosecutors said, Mr. Pelham went back inside the house, only to return at shortly after 10:45 p.m., opening fire again.
None of the deputies was hit.
The authorities arrested Mr. Pelham on Tuesday, and a search of the house later revealed a 9-millimeter pistol, four boxes of ammunition and several bullet holes in the walls, prosecutors said. He could face up to 15 years in prison on the felony gun charge on top of any penalties he may receive for the misdemeanors counts connected to the Capitol attack.
Mr. Pelham is not the first person who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 to try to go after law enforcement officers or charged with trying to do so.
In December, Edward Kelley, a Tennessee man who was already facing charges of assaulting a police officer during the riot, was charged with plotting to assassinate several of the federal agents who had investigated him and to attack the F.B.I.’s field office in Knoxville, Tenn.
In August, after federal agents searched Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald J. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, looking for classified documents, an Ohio man named Ricky Shiffer tried to break into the bureau’s field office near Cincinnati armed with a rifle.
Mr. Shiffer, who had taken part in a pro-Trump rally at the Capitol on Jan. 6 but apparently did not break into the building, was rebuffed by security at the F.B.I. office. After fleeing, he was killed in a shootout with the local police.
Source: nytimes.com
