Broad Channel resident Ralph Joseph Celentano III was sentenced to more than six years in federal prison for assaulting police officers during the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Photos courtesy of the Eastern District of New York
A Broad Channel man who blind-sided a police officer and shoved him over a ledge at the U.S. Capitol Building during the Jan.6, 2021 riot, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
Ralph Joseph Celentano III, 46, was sentenced Tuesday to 78 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release after a jury convicted him in June on two felony charges, including assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers and civil disorder and related misdemeanor offenses.
When imposing the sentence, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly told Celentano that his conduct was “disgraceful,” calling the attack on the officer “a truly cowardly and despicable thing to do.” Federal agents raided Celentano’s Broad Channel home on Mar. 9, 2022 after the FBI identified him through a 2018 photo that investigators discovered on Facebook that showed him attending a fundraiser for the Jenny Albert Sea Turtle Foundation in Broad Channel.
According to court documents, Celentano traveled from Queens to Washington, D.C. and attended the” Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse, a park south of the White House, and afterward made his way to the Peace Monument on U.S. Capitol grounds, just outside the restricted perimeter.
There, he was recorded saying, “Someone’s gotta do something!” When he was asked what exactly should be done, Celentano replied, “Occupy the Capitol, it’s our building.”
Celentano then worked his way through thousands of people on the west side of the Capitol to get to the very front of the mob that was confronting a police line, shouting at officers, “How dare you pathetic pieces of sh–.”
Celentano and other rioters linked arms and…
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