Pennsylvania man charged with assaulting Officer Brian Sicknick with bear spray during Jan. 6 Capitol riot

Federal authorities have charged a Pennsylvania man with assaulting Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick during the Jan. 6 riot in Washington but stopped short of accusing him of causing the officer’s death.

Prosecutors said Monday that Julian Elie Khater, 32, of State College, shot bear spray into the face of Sicknick and two other officers as a crowd of rioters mobbed the west side of the building and tore down metal barriers placed to keep them at bay.

Just moments before, they said, Khater had been caught on video pulling a canister of the chemicals from the backpack of another man, George Pierre Tanios, 39, of Morgantown, W.Va., who has also been charged in the case.

“Give me that bear s — ,” Khater told Tanios, according to a description of that footage detailed in court filings.

Tanios, according to the documents, responded: “Hold on. Not yet, not yet. … It’s still early.”

Authorities pointed to that exchange Monday in seeking to keep both men in custody until their trials, calling them flight risks and dangers to the community.

“This verbal exchange between Khater and Tanios … reveals that the two were working in concert and had a plan to use toxic spray against law enforcement,” FBI agents wrote in court filings.

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The investigation into Sicknick’s death has been one of the FBI’s top priorities as it carries out its vast national investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, which has led to more than 300 arrests, including at least 40 from Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Though 140 officers have reported they were assaulted by the mob of Donald Trump supporters who sacked the Capitol that day armed with bats, hockey sticks, sledgehammers, and their fists, Sicknick is the only one believed to have sustained fatal injuries during the attack.

Capitol Police officials initially reported that Sicknick — a 13-year Capitol Police veteran and native of South River, N.J. — had been hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. But as their investigation continued, they have revised their theory and now believe that his exposure to unidentified chemical irritants during the insurrection contributed to his death.

Sicknick collapsed after returning to his division office Jan. 6 and died in the hospital the next day. No official cause of death or autopsy reports have been released.

Authorities had said in recent weeks they were pursuing a murder investigation against suspects they had identified in the attack. But neither Khater nor Tanios was charged Monday with that crime. Instead, they face counts including assaulting officers, civil disorder, and obstruction of Congress that carry a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

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Court filings unsealed Monday detailed the extent of the injuries suffered by the two other officers who prosecutors say found themselves on the wrong end of Khater’s spray can. Both said the substance he shot at them was as strong or stronger than pepper spray or any other substance they’d been exposed to during their police training. One reported scabbing under his eyelids from the bear spray that lasted for weeks.

Agents said they were able to identify Khater and Tanios with the help of tipsters after circulating screenshots taken from security footage, the officers’ body cameras and the social media video online. But there was little to explain what brought either man to Washington on the day of the Capitol attack.

Both remained in custody Monday pending detention hearings scheduled for later this week in West Virginia and New Jersey, where Khater was arrested Sunday upon arriving on a flight at Newark Liberty International Airport. Khater’s attorney, Steven D. Altman, did not immediately return requests for comment.

Khater and Tanios grew up together in New Brunswick, N.J., the children of Lebanese immigrants before both left to manage fast-food franchises in other states. After graduating from Farleigh Dickinson University in 2011 with a degree in business administration, Khater spent years working in the restaurant and hospitality industry in the state before moving to Pennsylvania in 2018.

There, according to his LinkedIn profile, Khater worked in State College as the manager and co-owner of a Frutta Bowls health food franchise, which abruptly closed in June. Agents said it was one of his former employees there who identified him from photos circulated by the FBI.

Tanios, meanwhile, had moved to West Virginia several years ago and opened a franchise of Sandwich University, a local chain that exported the New Jersey college town speciality of “fat sandwiches” — loaded with greasy foods like chicken fingers, fries, and mozzarella sticks — to students at nearby West Virginia University. He described himself of LinkedIn as a “sandwich Nazi” and wore a sweatshirt with the company’s logo to the Capitol on Jan. 6.

His restaurant’s now deactivated Twitter account routinely retweeted Trump and questioned the purpose of wearing masks during the pandemic. Days before the 2020 election, he told a local news station that an unidentified vandal had thrown a rock through his business’ front window in what he described as a “hate crime” due to the “Trump 2020″ sign he’d placed there.

“We have a diverse staff and I’m Middle Eastern by descent, but because of my support for Trump we get all this hate,” he said.

Tipsters pointed the FBI to his Facebook page where he’d bragged about his presence during the Capitol insurrection and posted photos of himself amid the crowds.

He was turned in by several tipsters, including a former business partner who has accused him in a legal dispute of embezzling $435,000, according to court filings.

Staff writer Barbara Laker contributed to this article.