An Athol man shown in surveillance footage at the riot on the Capitol battering police with a riot shield will spend more than five years in prison for his role in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
“It was just fun, exciting, enjoyable. I mean, we were all — we were just having a relaxed, nice time,” said Vincent Gilespie during his jury trial in December of 2021, as transcribed in a prosecution sentencing memo filed on March 31.
On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell in federal court in Washington, D.C., sentenced Gillespie to 68 months in prison, which amounts to five years and eight months, to be followed by three years of supervised release. Gillespie also has to pay a $25,000 fine and $2,000 in restitution.
A D.C. jury convicted him on Dec. 23, 2002, on charges of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers; civil disorder; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building. The feds say that more than 1,000 people have been arrested in the investigation into the Jan. 6 riots.
Gillespie was arrested on Feb. 18, 2022. Court documents show that investigators tracked him down because he was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt sporting a logo for the western Massachusetts gym “Berkshire Nautilus” in footage from the riot.
Other tips came in after the photos were released from at least six witnesses including a former neighbor and people who work at local businesses Gillespie had frequented.
At trial, prosecutors say that from between 4:11 p.m. and 4:26 p.m. on Jan. 6, Gillespie, 61, worked his way through his fellow rioters in the Lower West Terrace of the capitol to push, shove, yell at and fight with police officers until he reached to the line of officers defending that sector’s exterior door to the capitol.
There, Gillespie grabbed a police shield and used it to ram the police before grabbing a Metropolitan Police Department sergeant by the arm and attempting to pill him toward the mob as he yelled such words as “traitor” and “treason” at the police.
In the defense’s sentencing memo, attorneys argue that he traveled overnight from home “without any concrete plan except to attend the former President’s rally and maybe do a little sightseeing.” They said that he had no prior criminal record and merely “mimicked other rioters” at the scene and because of that asked for a sentencing range of between 30 and 37 months in prison.