Another White House Fence Jumper

Mere hours after a gunman fired shots outside and inside Canada’s Parliament, another man jumped the fence at the White House, although this time the Secret Service didn’t hesitate to apprehend him:

A man jumped the White House fence Wednesday night and was taken into custody after being bitten by a guard dog, officials said, just weeks after another fence jumper made it deep into the executive mansion amid a series of security failures.

Secret Service agents and K-9 units quickly apprehended the latest fence jumper, who authorities identified as Dominic Adesanya, 23, of Bel Air, Md. He was taken to a hospital with injuries from a dog bite, and charges against him were pending, authorities said.

Two of the Secret Service dogs — named Hurricane and Jordan — were taken to a veterinarian and treated for minor bruising they suffered during the incident, according to agency spokesman Edwin Donovan. “Both K-9s were cleared for duty by the veterinarian,” Donovan wrote in an e-mail.

Despite its quick ending, the struggle close to the executive mansion prompted a burst of activity from security personnel. Authorities shut down Lafayette Square, moving dozens of tourists to H Street NW, and the White House remained under lockdown for more than 90 minutes afterward. President Obama was in the building, but his precise whereabouts — and those of his family — were unclear.

Adesanya has been charged with two counts of assault on a police officer — a charge that stems from his attack on the dogs — along with one count of making threats and four counts of resisting and unlawful entry, Donovan added. All charges except for resisting and unlawful threats are felonies; Adesanya was unarmed at the time of his arrest.

Adesanya was released from a local hospital and taken into custody, Donovan said. No court date was immediately set.

In the wake of the last incident, the Secret Service had installed a second, shorter, fence to try to thwart fence jumpers, but that obviously didn’t work here and that may lead to efforts by the agency to further restrict access to the area in front of the White House. It is, at the least, good that the agents on duty reacted quickly this time and brought the jumper down before he got near the White House, but after yesterday’s events in Canada, and last month incident in which someone actually got inside the building, these events take on something of a more serious tone.

FILED UNDER: Crime, Law and the Courts, National Security, , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. stonetools says:

    Maybe its time for barbed wire on top of the fence…
    Nobody jumps over a roll of barbed wire, although it’s aesthetically unappealing.

  2. grumpy realist says:

    I can see it now: “White House Fence Jumping”–the new Olympic Sport.

    I do like the “getting bitten by the dog” touch.

  3. CSK says:

    @grumpy realist:

    I was just going to say something about this being the new Olympic sport. Beat me to it.

  4. gVOR08 says:

    My understanding is that before the first incident Obama and his family had departed the WH and a lot of the really heavy security had, per standard operating procedure, left shortly afterward, before the incident. The first guy did no real harm. The second guy was stopped, apparently per SOP. None of this really sounds like much of a crisis.

  5. Tyrell says:

    In other words, the White House fence is in the same shape as the US borders.

  6. anjin-san says:

    @Tyrell:

    In other words, the White House fence is in the same shape as the US borders.

    Perhaps there are still old sections of the Berlin Wall that could be repurposed in a manner that would please conservatives.

  7. ernieyeball says:

    @anjin-san:..Perhaps there are still old sections of the Berlin Wall…

    See National Churchill Museum in Fulton MO. where in March 1946 Sir Winston stated:

    “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”

    http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/02/6e/ba/48/the-statue-breakthrough.jpg
    I was 13 in 1961 when the wall went up and the fears of nuclear war hung in the air.
    To see the Wall that had been ripped down by free citizens in 1989 on display in the American Midwest was quite moving.