WASHINGTON — A man jumped the White House fence on Thursday afternoon while the first family was inside celebrating Thanksgiving.
Joseph Caputo, who was wearing an American flag around his shoulders, raised a binder in the air as he stood triumphantly on the White House lawn.
He scaled the fence with the binder clenched in his teeth at about 2:45 p.m., the Secret Service said.
A witness said Caputo was standing with other people visiting the White House compound when he rushed toward the fence carrying the binder.
“I just heard him take a big, deep breath and whisper to himself, ‘All right, let’s do this,’ and he took off,” said Houston resident Victoria Pena. “It was chaotic. Everyone around us was yelling and kids were crying. It was pretty unexpected.”
Caputo was immediately arrested. The White House was briefly placed on lockdown.
The brazen jumper wrote anti-government screeds on his Facebook page and hinted that he would use Thanksgiving to celebrate “self-government.”
“Today has as much to do with turkeys and pilgrims as Easter does with eggs and rabbits,” Caputo wrote. “So today, don’t think of what your planet can do for you, think about what you can do for your planet.”
The Secret Service said criminal charges were pending.
President Obama, first lady Michelle and their daughters, Malia and Sasha, were spending the holiday at the White House.
The Turkey Day stunt was the latest of several presidential security breaches.
In May, a second layer of steel spikes was added to the top of the fence. In a September 2014 security breach, a Texas man managed to scale the fence, enter the executive mansion and run deep into the building.
With AP