2 Men Charged With Assault On Capitol Police Officer Who Died

WASHINGTON, DC — Federal authorities arrested and charged two men with assaulting U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick with bear spray during the Jan. 6 insurrection, but they do not know yet whether it caused the officer’s death.

George Tanios, 39, of Morgantown, West Virginia, and Julian Khater, 32, of Pennsylvania, were arrested Sunday. Both were ordered to remain in government custody pending formal detention hearings in their case.

Sicknick died after trying to defend the Capitol against the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the building as Congress was voting to certify Joe Biden’s electoral win in the November presidential election. He died at a hospital on the evening of Jan. 7.

At this point, neither of the men is being charged with actually causing Sicknick’s death. More than two months after Sicknick died, the DC Medical Examiner’s Office has not released the results of an autopsy or publicly stated a cause of death.

"The attack on the U.S. Capitol and on our police officers, including Brian Sicknick, was an attack on our democracy,” U.S. Capitol Police Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman said in a statement Monday. “Those who perpetrated these heinous crimes must be held accountable, and — let me be clear — these unlawful actions are not and will not be tolerated by this Department."

"I want to thank our skillful USCP investigators as well as our FBI and MPD partners for their work to identify and arrest those responsible for these violent acts, as well as Acting U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips and his staff for their prosecution of these cases,” Pittman said.

Around 2:30 p.m. on the day of the insurrection, Khater is seen on video discharging a canister of a toxic substance into the face of Sicknick and two other officers, arrest papers allege. The incident occurred at the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol, where Sicknick and other officers were standing guard behind metal bicycle racks.

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Khater and Tanios are each charged with nine counts, including assaulting three officers with a deadly weapon — Sicknick, another U.S. Capitol Police officer identified as C. Edwards and a D.C. police officer identified as B. Chapman. They are also charged with civil disorder and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The charges are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

In an affidavit, an FBI special agent points to an open-sourced video where Khater is seen telling Tanios to hand him a spray canister near the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol at 2:14 p.m.

"Give me that bear sh**," Khater says.

"Hold on, hold on, not yet... it's still early," Tanios then replies.

An expert interviewed by WUSA 9 said she was unaware of any instances in which bear spray has caused a death. “I am not aware of any human deaths after bear spray exposure,” said Dr. Kelly Johnson- Arbor, medical director at The National Capitol Poison Center.

Law enforcement officials initially said Sicknick was struck with a fire extinguisher, a claim that spread through news reports for days after the insurrection. But medical examiners did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma, so investigators believe that early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true.

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