WASHINGTON — A photographer snapped a picture of a Proud Boy spraying pepper gel toward police on Jan. 6 because he looked “prepared” for violence, he testified Wednesday at the man’s trial.
Lev Radin, a freelance photographer based out of New York, was called as one of the government’s first witnesses in the trial of Christopher Worrell. The Naples, Florida, Proud Boy faces six counts, including felony charges of assaulting police with a dangerous weapon and civil disorder.
Radin said he arrived in D.C. late in the morning on Jan. 6 and followed the crowd that was marching from the Washington Monument to the U.S. Capitol. There, he said, he was surprised at how quickly things went south.
“The crowd which was close to the barricades was really violent,” he said. “I was astonished that many of them were wearing vests, tactical vests, and had brought weapons with them like baseball bats.”
Radin wound up on the west side of the Capitol near the stairs to the Lower West Terrace, where some of the most prolonged fighting between rioters and police took place. It was there where Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola is accused of stealing the riot shield he used to smash in a window, and it was also there where another Proud Boy, Worrell, is accused of assaulting a line of officers.
In their opening statement, prosecutors said Worrell had met up at the Washington Monument with a group of Florida Proud Boys who called themselves “Zone 5” and then marched to the Capitol. Worrell, they said, was angry with policing for stopping the crowd from entering the building.
“He sneered. He held up his middle finger and yelled, ‘F*** you.’ He called them the commies with the guns,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexis Loeb said.
Eventually, she said, standing back and hurling insults at police wasn’t enough for Worrell.
“That’s when he stepped forward,” Loeb said.
In an image captured by Radin, Worrell can be seen holding up a canister of pepper gel – a thicker, more targeted version of pepper spray – and deploying a stream toward what prosecutors say is a line of police just out of frame. Radin testified that he saw Worrell aiming the spray at police for several seconds before he decided to take the photo.
“He caught my attention because he was pointing spray toward the police line,” he said. “He was wearing a tactical vest. Obviously a supporter of Trump. And he came to do some violence. He was prepared.”
Under cross-examination by Worrell’s attorney, William Shipley, Radin confirmed he couldn’t see where the spray landed and conceded police and rioters were clashing in close proximity to one another at that location. But he repeatedly said he had no doubt Worrell was aiming for police – saying he never saw a single rioter use pepper spray against another rioter that day.
“You can see the gentleman’s gaze,” Radin said about his picture. “You can see him looking at police officers, not at anyone around him. You can see his eyes.”
Worrell can be seen in footage of a group of Proud Boys and other rioters, including his former co-defendant Dan “Milkshake” Scott, charging police lines a short time later. In a video, prosecutors said Worell can be heard yelling, “Yeah! Taking the Capitol!”
Worrell’s attorney, Shipley, said unlike other rioters he then made the decision to leave the area and never entered the Capitol. He argued there was no video showing Worrell actually hitting officers with pepper gel and promised the bench trial before U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth would be a “very simple case of failure of proof.”
Scott pleaded guilty in February to two felony counts of obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting, resisting or impeding police. He was scheduled to be sentenced on May 23. It was not immediately clear whether prosecutors intended to call him as a witness to testify in Worrell’s trial.
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