Cary, NC man charged with assaulting police during Capitol riot with ‘bear spray’

A 19-year-old man from Cary was arrested Monday for assaulting law enforcement and other crimes during the Jan. 6 riots in which supporters of former President Trump breached the U.S. Capitol.

Aiden Henry Bilyard was arrested by federal investigators in Raleigh and was released, the U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday.

Bilyard is charged with physical violence in a restricted building or grounds, civil disorder, and assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers with a dangerous weapon among other misdemeanors, according to a news release.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Bilyard following an investigation of social media accounts with aid from online sleuths, according to Huff Post, who first reported the news.

His charges stem from allegedly spraying a line of Capitol police officers with a chemical irritant, referred to as “bear spray,” and also damaging property with a baseball bat, according to the news release.

Police said that before he damaged and broke into the Capitol, Bilyard was part of a group of rioters at 2:35 p.m. that day in the Lower West Terrace area of the building. He is spotted in video footage holding a gold-colored canister that he pointed at a line of officers attempting to secure the building, according to a release. He then sprayed them with an orange-colored liquid to incapacitate them, court documents say.

Later during the attack on the Capitol at approximately 4:10 p.m., Bilyard was also shown in video footage encouraging a person damaging a glass window of the Capitol with what appeared to be a small axe, a news release said. He was given a bat that he used to shatter the lower glass portion of the window, then entered through it into a Senate room, according to court documents.

After participating in the riots, Bilyard went to basic training for the U.S. Air Force earlier this year but left to go home to Cary, according to records reported by the Huff Post.

The online sleuths assisting the FBI investigating Capitol rioters — who called themselves the “sedition hunters” — identified Bilyard as a rioter and nicknamed him #HarvardSweats for a Harvard University sweatshirt he wore on Jan. 6.

The FBI used a Facebook photo uploaded by his mother of him wearing the same sweatshirt as part of evidence to charge him in connection to the riots.

The News & Observer has reached out to her for a response to the charges.

Bilyard was recently a student at Wake Tech Community College, completing an Associate of Science in computer science, a spokesperson for the college confirmed.

The investigation is being conducted by the FBI’s Charlotte Field Office and is ongoing.

More than 675 individuals have been arrested in almost 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the Capitol, including over 210 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement in the ten months since Jan. 6, the Department of Justice said.

This story was originally published November 23, 2021 at 4:29 PM with the headline "Cary, NC man charged with assaulting police during Capitol riot with ‘bear spray’."

Aaron Sánchez-Guerra

The News & Observer

(919) 297-8162

Aaron Sánchez-Guerra is a breaking news reporter for The News & Observer and previously covered business and real estate for the paper. His background includes reporting for WLRN Public Media in Miami and as a freelance journalist in Raleigh and Charlotte covering Latino communities. He is a graduate of North Carolina State University, a native Spanish speaker and was born in Mexico. You can follow his work on Twitter at @aaronsguerra.