A Washington DC police officer who was tasered as he defended the US Capitol on January 6 has said the mother of the rioter involved in the attack called him a “piece of s***” after her son was sentenced.
Speaking on CNN’s Don Lemon Tonight after Kyle Young was sentenced on Tuesday, Michael Fanone recounted how he was insulted by the rioter’s mother when leaving the court.
“I think it is important for the American people to understand that a lot of the family members and defendants in these cases are expressing degrees of remorse in order to, hopefully, gain some leniency from the sentencing judge, as was in this case,” Mr Fanone, who is no longer with the department, said.
“Mr Young expressed a degree of remorse. His mother stood up and tried to apologise to me in the courtroom and then later on, as I was leaving the courthouse, his mother and several other individuals who were seated with her in the courtroom again called me a ‘piece of s***.’”
Young, 38, was sentenced to seven years in prison by Judge Amy Berman Jackson. Young brought his 16-year-old son to Washington from Iowa and supplied the taser used by another rioter to electroshock Mr Fanone, who suffered a heart attack and traumatic brain injury as a result of the assault.
In his victim impact statement, Mr Fanone, who was employed by the Metropolitan Police Department for 20 years before resigning in 2021, said that he hoped Young would suffer in jail.
“The assault on me by Mr Young cost me my career, it cost me my faith in law enforcement and many of the institutions I dedicated two decades of my life to serving,” Mr Fanone said in court.
He later told Mr Lemon on air that as he was walking back from the podium, an individual who was seated with other relatives of Young stood up and called him a “piece of s***””. The man was removed from the court by US Marshals.
But the verbal attacks continued after Mr Fanone left the courtroom. He said he doesn’t believe Young has any remorse and that he apologised to gain empathy from the judge.
Mr Fanone choked back tears during his CNN appearance, saying the attacks by Young’s family were not an isolated incident.
“[Sometimes] I’m trying to focus on being a parent and I get calls and texts from people who express that they want me to die, that they hope that I rot in hell,” Mr Fanone said.
In the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, Mr Fanone, now a law enforcement analyst for CNN, became a vocal critic of the mob that attempted to disrupt Congress from convening to certify the electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election.
He has appeared on television and before the January 6 House Select Committee to decry the insurrection.
Young pled guilty in May to assaulting, resisting or impeding officers. While in the lower west terrace area of the Capitol, Young held a strobe light, pushed forward a stick-like object and assisted in throwing a large audio speaker toward the police line.
He then held Mr Fanone’s left wrist and arm as he was being tasered. In an op-ed for CNN titled What my January 6 assailant deserves, Mr Fanone, who yelled ‘I got kids!’ as he tried to appeal to the mob’s emotions, said he was also diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
