An accused Jan. 6 rioter, dubbed ‘FashNSlash’ online, was arrested in N.J. for slashing Capitol Police tires
Investigators identified Philip S. Young, of Sewell, by the distinctive logo of Local 28 of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers embroidered on the jacket he wore during the insurrection.
It was pride in his profession that did in Philip Young as federal prosecutors charged the former boilermaker from Gloucester County this week with scuffling with officers outside the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot in Washington.
FBI agents identified Young, 59, from the distinctive logo of his union, Local 28 of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, embroidered on the jacket they said he wore while he led a mob that used defensive metal barricades to shove officers on the Capitol’s upper west terrace — an assault caught on bodycam video.
The same distinctive sigil showed up in a photo, taken hours later, of the same man slashing the tires of a Capitol Police car parked on the opposite side of the building.
And when investigators earlier this summer took those images to two people who had known Young for years, neither hesitated to identify the man in the boilermaker’s jacket as a retired member of the union, according to charging documents in his case.
Agents arrested him Thursday at his home in Sewell on charges including assaulting officers and interfering with law enforcement during a civil disorder — the most serious of which could send him to prison for up to eight years.
He’s at least the 19th defendant from New Jersey to face charges in what has become the seventh month of one of the most expansive criminal investigations in the history of the Justice Department.
More than 580 people have been charged so far, and the rate of new cases filed each week has shown few signs of slowing.
As with many of the other arrests, the active community of online “sedition hunters” who have pored over thousands of open-source images and videos posted to social media of the Jan. 6 insurrection played a role in identifying Young.
As FBI agents circulated the image of the man in the boilermaker jacket and American flag bandanna asking for public tips about his identity, they tracked down the photo of him sticking what appears to be a knife into the tires of a Capitol Police car. And they gave him gave him the nickname “FashNSlash” in homage to the fascistic tactics of the rioters that day and Young’s purported method of choice for registering his dissent.
But as Young’s case awaited transfer Friday to federal court in Washington, few details emerged as to what prompted his presence among the mob that stormed the Capitol in support of then-President Donald Trump.
Court dockets did not indicate whether Young had retained an attorney. Calls to his home and former union went unanswered.
And, according to New Jersey voting records, Young was — at least up until early last year — registered as a Democrat.
Read the complaint: