A 'do not enter' sign is posted outside the White House on Thursday morning a day after the US Secret Service apprehended 23-year-old Dominic Adesanya who ran onto the north lawn of the executive mansion in Washington, DC.
AFP/Washington
An unarmed man arrested for climbing over the White House fence has been charged with assaulting a Secret Service officer after he attacked police dogs.
The Secret Service said 23-year-old Dominic Adesanya climbed over the north fence of the White House at 7.16 pm on Wednesday and was quickly taken into custody by K-9 police teams and officers.
Video on local media showed a man punching and kicking guard dogs that were unleashed on him shortly before he was arrested by officers.
Adesanya, who is from the town of Bel Air, Maryland, outside the capital, was unarmed at the time of his arrest.
He was charged with two felony counts of assaulting a police officer, four misdemeanour counts of resisting arrest and unlawful entry and a felony count of making arrests, the Secret Service said.
After his arrest, Adesanya was taken to a local hospital to be assessed, and was later released.
He was then transferred to the custody of the US Marshal Service for previous outstanding arrest warrants, the Secret Service said.
"His court date is pending at this time," a spokesman for the president's elite security agency said Thursday.
Two Secret Service dogs - "Hurricane" and "Jordan" - were treated for minor bruises by a veterinarian and cleared for duty.
The incident came just weeks after another man jumped over the fence, sprinted across the North Lawn and entered the executive mansion with a knife in his pocket, triggering withering criticism of security lapses.
Omar Gonzalez has been indicted on two counts of "assaulting, resisting or impeding" Secret Service agents for the September 19 breach.
