William Lewis is seen spraying a wasp repellent at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Attorney’s Office)
An Army veteran from Illinois who unloaded a can of “No Pest Wasp & Hornet Killer” while facing off with police guarding the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riots has learned his fate.
William Lewis, 58, was sentenced Friday to 37 months in prison — or more than three years — by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, a Barack Obama appointee. Lewis previously pleaded guilty to a felony charge of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers, the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a press release.
In a sentencing memo asking for 57 months — or nearly five years of incarceration, prosecutors said Lewis was a ready, willing, and determined participant in the chaos that day. The government said Lewis made his way to the defensive police line of officers struggling to prevent the mob from advancing to the Capitol building.
They added that he exacerbated the plight of the officers by spraying them four times with wasp and hornet repellent and that wasn’t the end of it.
“When police lines collapsed, he ascended to the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol building,” prosecutors wrote. “He helped further the illegal objectives of the mob by attacking a large, composite window to the right of the Lower West Terrace tunnel. Wearing protective gloves and a backpack garnished with a small American flag, he viciously and repeatedly struck four panes of the window with a stolen police baton until he had shattered 3 of them.”
They also said Lewis felt no remorse for his actions that day.
The day of his arrest he talked to agents, saying he went to the Capitol “to show support” for Donald Trump. He said that he had traveled with a “combat buddy.” The defendant said he thought the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” and even believed it at the time of the FBI interview. He hoped his presence at the Capitol would “encourage” Congress not to certify the electoral vote. He had hoped they would ask for a recount, prosecutors added.
Lewis admitted to using spray but said that he never intended to spray any officers, according to authorities. He said he wanted to help the police.
“He explained that he was spraying other rioters to neutralize the effects of pepper spray that officers had sprayed in trying to quell the riot,” prosecutors wrote.
They noted his criminal history includes burglary, the facts of which Lewis admitted to that involved him throwing a trailer ball through the window of his neighbor’s house, kicking open the back door, and threatening to “gut” and kill his neighbor with a box cutter. Another neighbor intervened and restrained Lewis, the government’s memo said.
During his time in the Army, prosecutors said he had three DUI incidents in one year of his service. One resulted in an overturned Jeep. In connection with his discharge, commanding officers wrote scathing assessments.
“They concluded that Lewis had a clear disregard for other people’s lives and the safety of others and was not suitable for service in the U.S. Army,” prosecutors wrote. “He was barred from re-enlistment.”
“Lewis’ military service renders his conduct on January 6 all the more troubling. As a former member of the military, he should have been well-aware of the importance of following the law and not entering restricted government buildings. As a member of the Armed Forces, he swore an oath to uphold the Constitution — not undermine it. His determined efforts to help a violent mob storm a guarded government building which symbolizes our representative democracy are despicable.”
In his own sentencing memo seeking less incarceration time than the 51-to-63-month range, the defendant’s lawyer, Blaire C. Dalton, said Lewis had devoted his life to helping others but has struggled with addictions and undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder since serving in combat in Iraq in 1990-1991.
“Subsequent to his return from Iraq, Mr. Lewis struggled to return to ‘normal life’ and turned to narcotics to escape his demons,” Dalton wrote. “William Lewis failed himself and his country four years ago, to this date,” Dalton wrote. “While it is a date that will live in infamy for the United States of America, the same is true for Mr. Lewis’ life. It was a day that he became someone he did not recognize for a cause that he had been misled to believe.”
As Law&Crime previously reported, at least five officers with the Metropolitan Police Department were hit with the repellent that day. Two other officers were hit when Lewis took aim a second time. He hit an officer with a third deployment of the bug spray, according to criminal court filings.
That officer “experienced a burning sensation on his face and his eyes as a result of being sprayed,” according to prosecutors. After he sprayed a third time, Lewis threw the canister in the direction of the cops, prosecutors say.
Online sleuths gave Lewis the nickname “CarharttWasp” because he wore a Carhartt-brand hat and used wasp and hornet spray, the criminal complaint says.
Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.
