A Marine who stormed the United States Capitol and who apparently gave a Nazi salute in front of the building, was sentenced Friday to nearly five years in prison.
Tyler Bradley Dykes, of South Carolina, was an active-duty Marine when he grabbed a police riot shield from two officers and used it to force his way through police lines during the attack on the Mafia supporters of former President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021.
Dykes, who pleaded guilty in April to assault charges, was previously convicted of a felony stemming from the 2017 Unite the Right white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Dykes was transferred to a federal detention center in 2023 after serving a six-month sentence in state prison.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell sentenced Dykes, 26, to four years and nine months in prison, the Justice Department said.
Federal prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence five years and three months for Dykes.
“He directly contributed to some of the most extreme violence on the East Front of the Capitol,” prosecutors wrote.
Dykes’ lawyers requested a two-year prison sentenceThey said Dykes knew his actions on January 6 were “unlawful, indefensible and intolerable.”
“Tyler abhors his involvement in the Capitol riot,” his lawyers wrote. “He takes full responsibility for his actions. Tyler apologizes for those actions.”
Dykes, then 22, traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend Republican Trump’s awards ceremony. “Stop the theft” rally with two friends from his hometown of Bluffton, South Carolina. After parting ways with his friends, Dykes ripped snow fences out of the ground and pushed aside bike rack barricades as he approached the Capitol.
Dykes later joined other rioters in breaking through a line of police officers defending the stairs leading to the doors of the Capitol’s East Rotunda.
“After reaching the top of the stairs, Dykes celebrated his accomplishment by performing what appears to be the Sieg Heil salute,” prosecutors wrote.
After stealing the riot shield from the two officers, Dykes entered the Capitol and held it in one hand while raising his other hand in celebration. He also used the shield to assault officers inside the building, forcing them to retreat down a hallway, prosecutors said.
Dykes handed the shield to an officer after leaving the Capitol.
Dykes has denied performing a Nazi salute on January 6, but prosecutors say his open-hand gesture was caught on camera.
In August 2017, photos showed Dykes joining white supremacists carrying tiki torches at a march on the University of Virginia campus on the eve of the Unite the Right rally. One photo shows him extending his right arm in a Nazi salute and carrying a lit torch in his left hand.
In March 2023, Dykes was arrested on charges related to the march. He pleaded guilty to a felony charge of burning an object with intent to intimidate.
Dykes briefly attended Cornell University in the fall of 2017 before joining the Marine Corps. In May 2023, he was discharged from the military under “other than honorable” conditions.
“Rather than honoring his oath to protect and defend the Constitution, Dykes’ criminal activity on January 6 shows that he chose instead to violate it,” prosecutors wrote.
More than 1,400 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. More than 900 of them have been convicted, about two-thirds of them to prison terms ranging from a few days to 22 years.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the U.S. Capitol insurrection on https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege.
