A northwest Indiana man received a 30-month sentence Tuesday in Washington District Court for striking an officer with a flagpole in the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021.
A U.S. District Judge also gave 73-year-old Dale Huttle of Crown Point 24 months of supervised release and ordered him to pay $3,639 in restitution for damage to the Capitol grounds.
He was arrested on Nov. 9, 2022, in Crown Point and entered a plea deal on Dec. 8, 2023.
Huttle said in an interview with CBS Chicago in 2022 that he is the “ultimate patriot” for showing up at the Capitol building.
His nephew, Matthew Huttle, was with him as well. Matthew was sentenced in Nov. 2023 to six months in jail and is now out on a year of parole.
According to the statement of facts and the plea statement, Huttle and his nephew entered the Capitol grounds and engaged in several violent confrontations with law enforcement on the Lower West Terrace.
Shortly after 2:05 p.m., as a mob of rioters began to forcefully remove bike rack barriers set up to secure the area, Dale Huttle approached the front of a crowd of rioters with a long wooden flagpole in hand.
Once the rioters moved the bike rack, Huttle lunged at an officer and hit him in the stomach. The officer lost his footing and fell on stairs, which caused a slipped disc in his back. The officer said he still suffers from back pain and continues treatment for the injury.
During the same incident, Huttle struck a second officer who had been knocked to the ground by the bike rack.
Approximately 30 minutes later, Huttle became involved in another altercation in which he reached for an officer’s gas mask, then grabbed and tried to pull away the officer’s baton, as he yelled “Surrender!”
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 1,200 individuals have been charged in almost every state for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol.