Rioter seen wearing 'Camp Auschwitz' hoodie during Capitol siege arrested
By JULIA JACOBO, AARON KATERSKY and ALEXANDER MALLIN, ABC News
(NEWPORT NEWS, Va.) — The rioter seen wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” hoodie during the siege on Capitol Hill has been arrested.
Robert Keith Packer, 56, was arrested in Newport News, Virginia, Wednesday morning.
The image of a man wearing a black hoodie with the words “Camp Auschwitz” emblazoned in white letters inside the U.S. Capitol building was circulated widely on social media.
Packer has a lengthy criminal record in the area and has been arrested in Newport News “well over a dozen times,” Newport News Sheriff Gabriel Morgan told ABC News.
Previous offenses included assault and battery, driving under the influence, drunk in public, driving under revocation, and probation violation, among others, Morgan said. Packer was last jailed in the county in 2012.
Packer faces charges of unlawful entry into the U.S. Capitol and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, according to an arrest warrant filed in Virginia federal court.
He was being held at the Western Tidewater Regional Jail and is expected to appear in federal court in Norfolk, Virginia, Wednesday afternoon.
A rioter who was standing next to Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt when she was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer, was also arrested by the FBI Wednesday.
New Jersey resident Thomas Baranyi, 28, appeared briefly in Newark federal court, where bail was set at $100,000.
Court records quoted Baranyi’s televised interview during which he showed a reporter blood on his hand after he stormed the Capitol.
In the interview, Baranyi explained that he got blood on his hand after storming into the Capitol and a “young lady” rushed through the windows.
“A number of police and Secret Service were saying get down, get out of the way. She didn’t heed the call and as we kind of raced up to try to grab people and pull them back, they shot her in the neck, and she fell back on me,” Baranyi said in the interview, according to the court documents.
Several others who participated in the siege have been arrested around the country in recent days.
The fur-pelted man photographed with a Capitol police shield was arrested Tuesday morning at his brother’s home in Brooklyn, facing four federal charges.
Many of the rioters were implicated by their own social media posts, ABC News’ chief investigative reporter Josh Margolin said on “Start Here,” an ABC News daily podcast, on Monday.
Suspected rioters who allegedly brought zip ties and wore tactical gear were arrested in Texas and Tennessee on Tuesday.
The man seen carrying Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lectern through the Capitol halls and the shirtless man dressed in horns, a bearskin headdress and red, white and blue face paint were arrested on Friday in Florida and Arizona, respectively.
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