Washington, Nov 27 (EFE).- The man who leaped over the north fence of the White House is facing criminal charges, though his intentions are as yet unknown.
The individual, identified as Joseph Caputo, was arrested Thursday immediately after breaking into the garden wrapped in an American flag, in an incident that lasted a scant five minutes, Secret Service spokesman Robert Hoback said.
At the time of the incident, President Barack Obama was inside the residence celebrating Thanksgiving with his family.
The Secret Service has released no further information about Caputo, nor has it said whether or not he was bearing arms of any kind.
Agents are now analyzing how the man in custody made it over the fence, given that it had been reinforced with sharp steel spikes precisely to thwart incidents like the one on Thursday.
Caputo thus became one more on the list of intruders who have tried to jump the north fence of the White House over the past year.
The most serious incident occurred on Sept. 19, 2014, when an Iraq war veteran with mental problems, Omar J. Gonalez, became the first armed intruder in the history of the presidential mansion.
Gonzalez managed to enter the residence armed with a knife and approached the living area of the presidential family, which had left the building just minutes before.
That incident led to an exhaustive review of Secret Service protocols and the resignation of its then-director, Julia Pierson.
But just a month later, on Oct. 22, another man made it over the north garden fence of the White House despite the mobile security barriers put in place after the Gonzalez break-in.
That time, however, agents detained the intruder before he could reach the presidential mansion.
In April this year, a 54-year-old man was arrested by the Secret Service after leaping the White House fence carrying a suspicious package, though subsequent analysis found it did not represent a threat.
