The 23-year-old Maryland man who was the latest intruder to scale the White House fence Wednesday night was charged with felonies for assaulting two police dogs and making threats, the Secret Service said Thursday.
Two Secret Service dogs were ultimately responsible for capturing the intruder, Dominic Adesanya of Bel Air, Maryland. The highly-trained Belgian Malinois dogs, 6-year-old Hurricane and 5-year-old Jordan, helped two uniformed human Secret Service agents apprehend Adesanya after he got on the North Lawn of the White House.
Video of the incident recorded by TV news cameras shows a man in white shorts on the lawn just inside the fence. The man lifts his shirt as if to show that he is unarmed, then is seen kicking and punching the two Secret Service dogs.
President Barack Obama was in the White House at the time of the breach.
The Secret Service said on Thursday that the dogs were treated by a veterinarian for minor bruising and cleared to return to duty.
Belgian Malinois
Hurricane and Jordan are two of 75 mostly Belgian Malinois dogs who work for the Secret Service, according to author and Secret Service expert Ronald Kessler. He wrote the book “The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents” and is a former Washington Post reporter.
According to Kessler, the dogs are “prey-driven” animals who are rewarded for a job well done by play with a ball. The animals cost about $4,400 apiece. The K-9 unit they belong to regularly performs security sweeps and responds to bomb threats and suspicious packages, according to the Secret Service.
“They are cross-trained to sniff out explosives and to attack an intruder,” said Kessler on Thursday. He added that the repeated jumpers in the past few months makes it “pretty obvious” that the White House perimeter should be pushed out.
About a month ago, a White House fence jumper carrying a knife sprinted across the same lawn, ran past armed uniformed agents, and entered the mansion before he was tackled in the ceremonial East Room and taken into custody.
There were dogs on patrol at the time, but handlers did not send them to apprehend him. News reports at the time said they thought he was unarmed and also hesitated to send the dogs into a crowd.
This week, a federal judge delayed the arraignment of Omar Gonzalez, the individual charged in September’s fence-jumping incident, because of questions about his mental fitness to stand trial.
Gonzalez has been indicted on several charges, including of carrying a knife into the White House and assaulting two Secret Service officers.
Dog Twitter Pics
The Secret Service wouldn’t comment on the history of Wednesday night’s dogs who took Adesanya down, but did send out photos of them via Twitter.
The brief bios with the photos described Hurricane as a black Belgian Malinois who “enjoys playing with his Kong toy.” Jordan is described as a black and tan Belgian Malinois who “enjoys walks around the White House.” They were both described as being “ready to work.”
Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary said Adesanya was in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service for previous outstanding warrants, and has been charged with four misdemeanor counts of resisting arrest and unlawful entry. He has a history of arrest at the executive mansion and was charged with unlawful entry at the White House complex in late July.
An Easy Fence
A court document says he told an officer that a security barrier he jumped over at the time “was easy and that the next fence to the south grounds of the White House would not be a problem as well.”
He was apprehended three days after the July incident at the White House complex for refusing to leave the Treasury building next door and swinging his fists at officers. Warrants for his arrest were issued after he failed to appear in court in September. An attorney representing him in those arrests did not immediately return a telephone call Thursday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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