A 54-year-old Queens man was arrested by the FBI Wednesday morning for assaulting a U.S. Capitol Police officer and repeatedly engaging in physical confrontations with law enforcement during the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to a criminal complaint.
According to the complaint, on the day of the riot, Ralph Celentano III approached a uniformed Capitol police officer from behind and shoved him over a ledge on the Capitol’s west terrace. The officer, an Iraq war veteran, recalled being “blind-sided” by a “football-type tackle” in interviews with the FBI, according to the complaint.
“I didn’t survive a war to go out like this,” the officer told the FBI.
Celentano traveled from his home in Broad Channel, Queens to Washington, D.C. on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021 and returned to the city the next day around 7:30 p.m., the FBI said, citing E-ZPass data.
In the interim, Celentano found himself in physical conflict with law enforcement repeatedly, the complaint said. According to the complaint, Celentano can be seen on body camera footage fighting Capitol police and Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officers armed with riot shields and batons, while carrying a flag and wearing a folding chair on his back.
The FBI said they were able to identify Celentano in part because of social media photos posted from an event for the Jenny Albert Sea Turtle Foundation, a nonprofit based in Broad Channel.
Celentano is charged with assaulting resisting or impeding certain officers; civil disorder; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly conduct in a Capitol building; and act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings.