A North Carolina man who failed to show up in court after being found guilty last year of assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was sentenced on Tuesday to six years in prison, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department said. The man, David Joseph Gietzen, of Sanford, N.C., was sentenced in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after being found guilty by a jury in August of five felonies and three misdemeanors. On Jan. 6, according to prosecutors, he appeared to grab a U.S. Capitol Police officer “by the throat or face mask” and to strike another with a pole. The sentence was confirmed by Patty Hartman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Mr. Gietzen, a former programming engineer, traveled to Washington, D.C., with his brother from North Carolina on Jan. 5, 2021, to protest the results of the 2020 presidential election, court documents show.

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Persons: David Joseph Gietzen, “, Patty Hartman, Gietzen Organizations: Capitol, Justice Department, District of Columbia, U.S . Capitol Police, U.S, Attorney’s, Washington , D.C Locations: Carolina, Sanford, N.C, U.S, Washington ,, North Carolina