Former State College smoothie-shop owner pleads guilty to attacking Officer Brian Sicknick during Capitol riot

A New Jersey man admitted Thursday his role in a chemical attack on two U.S. Capitol police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, including Officer Brian Sicknick who collapsed and died the following day.

Julian Khater, 33, of Somerset, told a federal judge in Washington that he’d sprayed the officers while squaring off against them as part of the violent mob that attacked the Capitol building that day.

His guilty plea to two felony counts of attacking a federal officer with a dangerous weapon comes two months after his childhood friend and codefendant in the case — George Tanios, 40, of Morgantown, W.Va. — struck a deal with prosecutors that allowed him to plead guilty only to misdemeanor crimes.

Under the terms of his plea agreement, Khater is likely to face anywhere from six to nine years in prison at a sentencing hearing scheduled for December. His attorney, Joseph Tacopina, did not immediately return requests for comment.

Sicknick’s death quickly became one of the highest-profile symbols of the riot’s fallout, which left scores of other officers injured as they sought to repel the violent mob of supporters of former President Donald Trump.

Though Sicknick was later found to have died of natural causes — two strokes suffered in quick succession — the medical examiner later found that what transpired outside of the Capitol likely contributed to his rapid deterioration in health. Neither Khater nor Tanios was charged with causing his death.

Still, body-camera footage showed Sicknick reeling, bent over, and rubbing his eyes as he moved away from the crowd on the Capitol steps just moments after Khater sprayed him and another officer in the face with what has been described as either bear or pepper spray.

Both the officer and the men now convicted of attacking him were all supporters of Trump and had grown up just minutes away from each other in New Jersey’s Middlesex County.

» READ MORE: Capitol cop Brian Sicknick and his accused attackers both had N.J. roots and supported Trump

Khater and Tanios were raised by migrant families that fled civil war in Lebanon in the 1980s to settle among New Brunswick’s sizable population of Maronite Christians. They left as young men to pursue separate business ventures catering to college students — Khater running a fruit-bowl shop in State College, Tanios opening a sandwich shop near West Virginia University.

Sicknick, who was born in New Brunswick and raised in nearby South River, joined the New Jersey Air National Guard and served multiple deployments in the Middle East before joining the Capitol police force and relocating to Washington.

Though the three men had never met before Jan. 6, 2021, they found themselves on opposite sides of a police barricade that day.

Footage shared on social media and officer body cams showed Khater and Tanios muscling their way to the front of a crowd that had mobbed the west side of the Capitol, where Sicknick was holding the line.

As they approached the barriers, Khater waved to Tanios shouting, “Give me that bear s—.” Tanios responded: “Hold on. Not yet. … It’s still early.”

Nevertheless, within minutes Khater is seen on the footage spraying the substance in the eyes of Sicknick and two other officers.

» READ MORE: A N.J. Marine reservist whose family says he ‘does stupid things sometimes’ pleads guilty to Capitol riot charges

In court Thursday, Khater admitted that he and Tanios had stopped on their way to Washington from Morgantown to purchase both bear and pepper spray. He previously told FBI agents they brought it out of fear of attack from counterprotesters.

Khater’s attorney, Joseph Tacopina, has previously said his client was acting on instinct when he sprayed Sicknick and the other officers and had never planned to attack police.

“It wasn’t a plan. It was a reaction” to being sprayed by police, Tacopina said at a bail hearing last year. “He used a defensive spray.”