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Bucks County gym owner charged in U.S. Capitol riot allegedly said: ‘We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin’ brain’

The FBI used a selfie video the woman allegedly took during the storming of the Capitol to identify her.

Rioters clash with police to try and gain entrance to a door at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington on Jan. 6.
Rioters clash with police to try and gain entrance to a door at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington on Jan. 6.Read more / File Photograph

Bucks County gym owner Dawn Bancroft lists “motivating people” as one of her specialties on her LinkedIn page, but a complaint filed against her this week by the FBI said she was motivated to do something else when she allegedly participated in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

“‘We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin’ brain, but we didn’t find her,’” Bancroft said in a selfie video taken as she stormed the Capitol, according to the FBI affidavit against her.

The criminal complaint against Bancroft, 58, of Doylestown, and another woman, Diana Santos-Smith, was filed Thursday. According to the Huffington Post, both women were arrested in Pennsylvania on Friday. It’s unclear where Santos-Smith resides. She could not be reached for comment.

Requests for comment to Bancroft’s voicemail and email were not returned Saturday.

The Bucks County Courier Times first identified Bancroft as the owner of CrossFit Sine Pari in Doylestown. According to Bancroft’s profile page on the gym’s website, she was a personal trainer and a group fitness instructor before being introduced to CrossFit by her son, who was in the Navy.

“If you want to be in the best shape of your life then you need to train like the best so train at Bucks Elite Fitness/CrossFit Sine Pari because there is NO EQUAL!” she wrote.

According to the FBI complaint, investigators received a tip Jan. 12 about a selfie video of Bancroft and Santos-Smith in “Make America Great Again” hats trying to exit the Capitol during the riot.

“‘We broke into the Capitol … we got inside, we did our part,’” the FBI quoted Bancroft as saying in the video, along with the alleged comment about “looking for Nancy to shoot her,” which the FBI alleges is a reference to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

During interviews with the FBI on Jan. 20, Santos-Smith said she never entered the Capitol, but when investigators showed her the video, she admitted that she was lying and that she and Bancroft did enter the building through a broken window, according to the complaint.

Santos-Smith provided investigators with video she took from inside the Capitol, which she had deleted to prevent investigators from discovering it, but was later able to recover, the FBI said.

Bancroft, who was interviewed on the same day, admitted to entering the Capitol for 20 to 30 seconds and said she filmed herself doing so and sent the video to her kids, but later told them to delete it, the complaint said.

Additional surveillance camera footage from inside the Capitol shows Bancroft and Santos-Smith entering the building on Jan. 6, the FBI said.

Both women face federal charges of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, knowingly engaging in disorderly or disruptive conduct in any restricted building or grounds, and knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful activity.

Bancroft and Santos-Smith are among at least 160 people nationwide and at least 10 across Pennsylvania who have been arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol.