WASHINGTON — The 23-year-old Maryland man who climbed over the White House fence Wednesday night has been charged with felonies for assaulting two police dogs and making threats, the Secret Service said Thursday.
Dominic Adesanya of Bel Air, Maryland, is in custody of the U.S. Marshals Service for previous outstanding warrants, Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary said. Adesanya has also been charged with four misdemeanor counts of resisting arrest and unlawful entry.
After climbing over the fence, Adesanya was swiftly apprehended on the North Lawn by uniformed Secret Service agents and their dogs. He was unarmed when he was arrested.
President Barack Obama was at the White House at the time of Wednesday’s incident.
Video of the incident recorded by TV news cameras shows a man in white shorts on the lawn just inside the fence. The man lifts his shirt as if to show that he is unarmed, then is seen kicking and punching the two Secret Service dogs.
Leary said the two dogs, named Hurricane and Jordan, were taken to a veterinarian and treated for minor bruising. Both dogs were cleared to return to duty.
The incident came about a month after a previous White House fence jumper carrying a knife sprinted across the same lawn, ran past armed uniformed agents and entered the mansion before he was felled in the ceremonial East Room and taken into custody.
That embarrassing Sept. 19 incident preceded the disclosure of other serious Secret Service breaches in security for Obama and ultimately led to Julia Pierson’s resignation as director of the agency after 18 months on the job.
After Pierson resigned, an agent who once led Obama’s protective detail came out of retirement to lead the Secret Service until Obama names a new director, pending the completion of internal and independent reviews of agency practices.
This week, a federal judge delayed the arraignment of Omar Gonzalez, the man charged in September’s fence-jumping incident, because of questions about his mental fitness to stand trial.
Gonzalez has been indicted on several charges, including carrying a knife into the White House and assaulting two Secret Service officers.
The latest security breach occurred the same day that a gunman went on a rampage in the Canadian capital of Ottawa.