According to a Bloomberg report, an Idaho man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to firing an assault rifle at the White House from his car. 23 year-old Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez admitted to shooting at the White House from his car. His lawyers claimed in a memo to presiding US District Judge Rosemary Collyer that their client has the misguided idea that his action would make the public aware that an Armageddon is coming and that Ortega-Hernandez has no intention to hurt anyone nor President Barack Obama.
Aside from the jail sentence, Ortega-Hernandez is also set to pay $94,000 in restitution for damages caused 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, said US attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald Machen in a statement.
According to prosecutors, Ortega-Hernandez fired a minimum of eight rounds through the passenger window of his 1998 Honda Accord 800 yards from the presidential residence. Bloomberg noted that the November 11, 2011 attack was the fifth done on the White House in the last two decades, and are each done by people who were said to be mentally unstable. Ortega-Hernandez' rifle, which was an AK-47-style Romanian Cugir, was a result of several months of preparation with the defendant vehemently protested against the US president, thinking that Obama is the Antichrist.
At the time of the shooting, prosecutors have said that Obama and the First Lady, Michelle, were not around.
Ortega-Hernandez's lawyers had asked Collyer to hand down only a 10-year jail sentence for their client. Bloomberg said that the shooter originally faced 19 charges, which include attempted assassination of the president. Ortega-Hernandez had pleaded guilty on September 18 to discharging a firearm during a crime and jeopardizing lives.
According to the memo submitted to Collyer for a reduced sentence, Ortega-Hernandez allegedly fell under the influence of survivalists following a childhood where he has been living in many places and saw his parents separated. Ortega-Hernandez was viewed to have no stable parental authority in his childhood, as he was raised by his mother at one time, then by his father, and then in Mexico by relatives.
