A man who is accused of confronting federal law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C., with a Subway sandwich has been charged with a felony after footage of the incident went viral.
In the video, the man can be seen shouting and pointing at federal law enforcement officers, including Metro Transit Police and Customs and Border Protection officers, calling them fascists and shouting “Shame!” as they walk around.
Armed with a sandwich from Subway, he eventually starts screaming in the officers’ faces before throwing his sandwich at one of them, after which he runs across the road as several officers give chase.
While the video does not show the man being arrested, U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro announced Wednesday in a video posted to X that the man has been charged with one felony count of assault on a police officer. She added that her office was “going to back the police to the hilt,” ending her video with a message for the man: “So there! Stick your Subway sandwich somewhere else!”
The man, a 37-year-old D.C. resident, was charged with “assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers and employees of the United States,” The Washington Post reports. A police complaint named the man as Sean Charles Dunn.
After his arrest, Dunn reportedly confessed to one of the officers, “I did it. I threw a sandwich,” according to the Post. Dunn has not yet commented on the case, according to The Guardian, and attempts to contact him by the Post were not immediately successful. It is unclear if he has legal representation.
The man has been praised online, including on the r/washingtondc subreddit, where he has been crowned as a “hero” in the “Battle for DC”; one user jokingly corrected that he was D.C.’s “gyro” instead.
The incident came the night before President Donald Trump announced that he was taking control of D.C.’s police force and deploying 800 National Guard troops to the city to combat what he describes as rampant “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.”
Trump has latched on to the issue of crime in the nation’s capital in the past week, issuing multiple edicts via Truth Social and declaring that he did not need Congress’ approval to federalize D.C. police. Official figures show that violent crime in D.C. is at a 30-year low.
“I don’t want to call a national emergency. If I have to I will. But I think the Republicans in Congress will approve this pretty much unanimously,” Trump told reporters at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday.
