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North Carolina family of 5, burning evidence, attack with 'metal flagpole' revealed in new Capitol riot indictment

By The Citizen on September 13, 2022

GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) – The path from North Carolina to right-wing extremist groups and the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, continues to become clearer.

Just this week we learned there are more than 1,100 members of one of those violent militias, the Oath Keepers, in North Carolina – including at least two state legislators – and a member from the Piedmont Triad is one of the 21 state residents indicted at the riots that attempted to overthrow the 2020 presidential election.

That would be Laura Steele, a former High Point police officer who lives in Thomasville. She is named in an eighth superseding indictment filed in June against a group of now eight (it had been seven) that are alleged to have assisted Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, in planning to disrupt that lawful transfer of power in Washington.

Surveillance image allegedly shows Laura Steele in the U.S. Capitol.
A surveillance image allegedly shows Laura Steele in the U.S. Capitol. (DOJ)

There also are the Proud Boys, whose leaders have been charged with seditious conspiracy. One of that group’s state leaders, Charles Donohoe of Kernersville, pleaded guilty to charges earlier this year.

Charles Donohoe
Charles Donohoe

They are just part of the more than 850 people in 48 states who have been charged with crimes during the insurrection, based on a database maintained by USA TODAY. More than 400 have been sentenced, including some 129 to prison terms.

This is all because supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed into the U.S. Capitol and drove members of Congress into hiding in a violent bid to disrupt the certification of a lawful presidential election of Joe Biden and keep Trump in power.

There were hundreds of injuries to law enforcement officers, much destruction of property, threats on the life of Vice President Mike Pence and others and, ultimately, seven lives were lost during or after the insurrection. There also have been all those legal proceedings.

A House Select Committee continues to investigate and promises hearings in the coming weeks.

There are six residents of the Piedmont Triad (including Donohoe and Steele) among the 21 defendants from North Carolina.

Matthew Mark Wood of Reidsville pleaded guilty on May 27 and awaits sentencing on three charges, and Virginia Spencer of Pilot Mountain – originally charged with her husband, Chris Spencer – and Anthony Joseph Sirica of Winston-Salem pleaded guilty and have completed their sentences. Chris Spencer’s charges remain in process.

The Steele case

Latest indictment by Steven Doyle on Scribd

Steele is named in seven of nine counts – up from eight – in the 35 pages of the new indictment, which describe how Rhodes and certain regional leaders recruited members, including Steele, to travel to Washington. They are alleged to have worn paramilitary clothing and Oath Keepers identification as they overpowered guards and invaded the Capitol through the doors to the rotunda, court documents say.

Steele’s brother, Graydon Young of Englewood, Florida, is among several named in the document but not indicted. Steele is the only defendant in the eighth charge, which describes how she and Young on Jan. 7 allegedly used a backyard burn pit to destroy evidence of the attack, including their clothing.

She and the others appeared before Federal District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta in Washington on May 6, and a trial date hoped for this fall may be delayed because of the multiple defendants and the complexities of the court docket.

There were two of those 21 arrests of North Carolinians that occurred this year, after investigators went through miles of video and still images and linked faces with names. A couple of them are curious, with one linked to a time of a shooting death.

The Robinson family

Linwood Robinson (DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE)

Benjamin Robinson of Matthews, just outside Charlotte, was arrested in May but apparently has not been arraigned. And it’s strange how his name is the only one on the federal list of defendants, because he hardly is the only Robinson named in court documents.

Investigators say they identified a man named Linwood Robinson as being at the Capitol by matching video to a prior arrest photo and to Linwood Robinson’s cell phone records.

Benjamin Robinson is one of Linwood Robinson’s two sons – Linwood Alan Robinson II is the other – and the investigative reports say those three along with a daughter-in-law Brittany Nicole Robinson and an unnamed grandchild were observed inside the Capitol building.

The document says the video shows the Robinsons walking toward the Speaker’s Lobby in the Capitol and approaching the door to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. They are alleged to be among those closest to that door when officers guarding it were forced to retreat.

“Rioters in the front of the crowd broke the glass windows leading to the House,” the report says. “Multiple people warned the group, ‘he’s got a gun,’ or simply, ‘gun,’ referring to the officers on the other side of the glass-paned door.

The FBI circled five people inside the Capitol it says are the Robinsons. (DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE)

That’s where Benjamin Scott Robinson was identified as using his body and foot to pound the door at the time a rioter, “later identified in news reports as Ashli Babbitt,” was climbing up and through the broken window.”

That’s when a shot was fired, and “all five Robinson family members left the area and exited the building together through the southeast doors.” Babbitt was killed in that shooting, and the officer was exonerated.

The charging document says all five Robinsons were unlawfully in a restricted building, impeding an official function, disrupting the orderly transfer of power and a variety of other offenses typical to these charges.

The complaint lists four criminal charges against the four adults. The grandchild is not named in any document. There has been no indictment or arraignment noted in the file, and there has been no update since the arrest on May 20.

The Beddingfield case

Video also led to the charges against Matthew Jason Beddingfield, 20, of Smithfield, who was arrested on Feb. 8 and charged with multiple counts involving being in the Capitol and having a weapon.

A 28-page statement of findings by investigators submitted on Feb. 2 includes charges that Beddingfield was one of the intruders at the Capitol who attempted to breach the Senate Wing of the Capitol.

An exhibit from the FBI report. (DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE)

The report says that Beddingfield was at the forefront of the group and that he “appears to use his metal flagpole to strike or attempt to strike law enforcement officers.”

The report includes dozens of images of Beddingfield inside and outside the Capitol, and investigators verified his identity because he was on probation from a criminal case in North Carolina.

His probation officer from the NC Department of Public Safety identified him in seven separate images in the report.

He is charged with obstructing or interfering with a fire or law enforcement officer carrying out duties, carrying a deadly weapon while entering a restricted building, carrying a deadly weapon while trying to obstruct an official proceeding, carrying a deadly weapon while engaging in an act of physical violence and engaging in disorderly or disruptive conduct, which includes impeding passage, engaging in physical violence and parading/demonstrating/picketing on the Capitol grounds.

The Jan. 6 cases from North Carolina

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