Proud Boy member involved in Miami GOP politics sentenced to prison for role in Jan. 6 riot
A Hialeah man who belonged to the local chapter of the Proud Boys was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for participating in the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol that aimed to block the congressional certification of the president election.
A Washington, D.C., federal judge found 49-year-old Gilbert Fonticoba guilty of civil disorder and obstruction of an official proceeding in October. Fonticoba was a member of the “Vice City” chapter of the Proud Boys, a right-wing militant group that played a central role in the insurrection at the Capitol building three years ago.
Fonticoba was one of several Proud Boys who previously sat on the executive committee of the Republican Party of Miami-Dade, according to The New York Times.
According to federal prosecutors, Fonticoba was among the rioters that illegally breached the Capitol on Jan. 6 as members of Congress met to certify President Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election over Republican incumbent Donald Trump. He aided other rioters in destroying a metal fence as police officers tried to stop the crowd’s advance to stop the certification of the Electoral College vote, the Justice Department said.
According to the account presented by prosecutors, Fonticoba met a group of roughly 100 other Proud Boys members near the Washington Monument in D.C. on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021. The group eventually marched toward the U.S. Capitol.
After trampling police barricades and pulling down the metal fence, Fonticoba and other rioters made their way into the Capitol, not long after the first wave of rioters had breached the building. Minutes later, Fonticoba posted a message to the instant-messaging service Telegram: “We just stormed the [Capitol].”
Follows conviction of other South Florida Proud Boy member
Fonticoba’s conviction came just a month after the Proud Boys’ former leader Enrique Tarrio, a Miami native, was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Tarrio was convicted in May of seditious conspiracy related for the central role he played in the effort to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election and keep former President Trump in the White House.
During the Jan. 6 riot, Fonticoba did not wear any Proud Boys colors, as instructed by the group’s leaders, but underneath his black jacket, he wore a distinctive T-shirt that read “ENRIQUE TARRIO DID NOTHING WRONG!”
Tarrio had left Washington the previous day after a judge ordered him to leave the city as part of his bail on an unrelated charge from a previous Proud Boys event supporting Trump after the election.
Tarrio was the former national chairman of the Proud Boys, which described itself as a “pro-Western fraternal organization for men who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world, aka Western Chauvinists.”
