Jesse A. Olivieri, of Ashland, Pa., is seen on CCTV security video being arrested after being shot by a U.S. Secret Service agent while carrying a gun outside the White House in May 2016. (Handout/Reuters)
An armed Pennsylvania man shot in the chest in May by a Secret Service agent as the man approached a White House guard booth was sentenced to prison Tuesday but will be allowed to serve his time at a hospital.
Federal prosecutors and defense lawyers said in court papers that Jesse A. Olivieri, 31, needs more time to recover from the wound and to get help for mental illness that went untreated for years and led him to think he was under constant video surveillance.
Court documents say that his disease caused him to go to the White House carrying a gun but that his intentions remain unknown. Authorities said Olivieri kept his silver .22-caliber Ruger handgun pointed at the ground near the Ellipse at 17th and E streets NW on the afternoon of May 20.
[Armed man charged after being shot by Secret Service agent outside White House]
“He does not seem to have been motivated by a desire to harm others,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Crabb Jr. wrote in a memorandum about the government’s sentencing recommendation. He noted, though, that the incident forced the White House into lockdown and prompted the Secret Service to move individuals under its protection into safe houses or to shelter in place.
The incident put “the public and law enforcement in substantial danger,” Crabb wrote in the document.
Prosecutors agreed to seek no more than a prison term of the eight to 14 months recommended by federal guidelines. U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth sentenced Olivieri to eight months in prison, but gave him credit for the time he has been detained since the shooting and is allowing him to spend the remaining months in the hospital.
Olivieri pleaded guilty in September to resisting or impeding a law enforcement officer with a dangerous weapon.
Authorities said the incident began when Olivieri walked toward the guard booth, ignoring repeated demands from uniformed Secret Service officers to drop the weapon. Police said that after he was shot by an agent, Olivieri told them, “I came here to shoot people.”
[Man pleads guilty to brandishing gun near White House]
But authorities are now convinced that he suffered from paranoid delusions, according to the sentencing memos.
Olivieri grew up in the small town of Ashland, Pa., off Interstate 81 between Harrisburg and Scranton. Court documents describe him as having been a normal child — active in school sports and playful outdoors.
But his lawyers said he was abusing alcohol by the age of 13, and then turned to cocaine, methamphetamines and other drugs. By age 20, Olivieri had quit drugs and alcohol but became paranoid, his attorneys said, thinking he was under surveillance.
Olivieri’s lawyers with the federal public defender’s office said his parents had him hospitalized briefly in 2006 and 2009 but never sought more comprehensive treatment because “his family did not realize the extent of his mental illness.”