A machete and three knives that U.S. Capitol Police say had been confiscated from a person who was arrested at a Capitol screening checkpoint as former President Jimmy Carter lay in state within the Capitol Rotunda, Jan. 8, 2025.
Source: The United States Capitol Police
Police arrested a man making an attempt to enter the U.S. Capitol with a machete and three knives Wednesday as former President Jimmy Carter, who died in late December, lay in state within the Capitol Rotunda.
The arrest came about simply hours earlier than President-elect Donald Trump was scheduled to go to the Capitol to pay his respects to Carter and meet with Republican senators.
The man, 44-year-old Mel Horne of Washington, D.C., was stopped when law enforcement officials noticed the machete in his bag throughout an X-ray screening within the Capitol Visitor Center simply after 2 p.m. ET, based on the U.S. Capitol Police.
Officers mentioned additionally they discovered three knives within the bag.
The discoveries prompted police to close down safety screenings on the north aspect of the customer middle for about an hour, the USCP mentioned.
Horne was arrested on a number of prices of carrying a harmful weapon.
“Our officers know they can’t let their guard down for one second,” USCP Chief Thomas Manger mentioned in a press launch. “It is that this fixed focus and a focus to element that helps hold this campus protected.”
Horne can be interviewed to find out his motives, mentioned the USCP. There isn’t any energetic menace to the Capitol, Congress or the general public at the moment, police mentioned within the launch.
Carter, who died Dec. 29 at age 100, was ceremonially carried into the Capitol Rotunda on Tuesday to lie in state. His casket will stay there till his funeral at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday.
Members of the general public had been allowed to come back to the Capitol beginning Tuesday night to pay their respects to the thirty ninth president. Horne’s arrest didn’t disrupt public viewing within the Rotunda, police mentioned.
Trump is about to take workplace on Jan. 20.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday afternoon flew again to Washington, D.C., from Los Angeles, the place he attended a briefing with California Gov. Gavin Newsom on the devastating wildfires which might be nonetheless spreading throughout swaths of the town.
Biden is scheduled to ship a eulogy for Carter at Thursday’s funeral service.
