On Tuesday, Federal agents arrested Capitol rioter Matthew Beddingfield for his role in the deadly insurrection on January 6, 2021, which he attended with his father while out on bail for a first-degree attempted murder charge, The Huffington Post reports.
According to HuffPost, ” Beddingfield was caught on camera brawling with police and entering the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6. He could also be seen jabbing at cops with a flagpole, and later was spotted inside the building. In addition to several misdemeanors, he faces felony charges of assaulting officers, impeding officers during a civil disorder, and carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon on restricted Capitol grounds.”
Beddingfield’s identity was first revealed by the Huffington Post on March 26, 2021, using facial recognition software to match footage of Beddingfield at the Capitol to his publicly available mug shot from a 2019 arrest for attempted murder.
HuffPost reported that “in December 2019, Beddingfield shot a teenager in the head in the parking lot of a North Carolina Walmart before fleeing the scene in a Dodge Charger. He was held in jail on a $1 million bond, then was released a few weeks later when it was lowered to $100,000. He has since pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.”
Beddingfield traveled to the Capitol with his father, Jason, who admitted to HuffPost that he himself had traveled to the Capitol on Jan. 6 in support of then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the election. However, he was adamant that his son wasn’t there.
