Prison term for driver who hauled weapons

An Alabama man who parked a pickup truck filled with weapons and Molotov cocktail components near the U.S. Capitol on the day of last year’s riot was sentenced to nearly four years in prison.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said she still hasn’t heard an explanation for why Lonnie Leroy Coffman had “almost a small armory in his truck, ready to do battle.” She sentenced Coffman on Friday to three years and 10 months in prison, giving him credit for the more than one year he already has served since his arrest.

Coffman, 72, of Falkville, Ala., said he never intended to hurt anybody or destroy any property. He said he drove to Washington alone “to try to discover just how true and secure was the (2020 presidential) election.”

“If I had any idea that things would turn out like they did, I would have stayed home,” he wrote in a handwritten letter to the judge.

More than 770 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot, when supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump stormed the building in an effort to disrupt lawmakers’ formal certification of his reelection defeat. Five people died and scores of Capitol Police officers were seriously injured.

Over 240 participants in the attack have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors punishable by a maximum of six months imprisonment. More than 130 have been sentenced. Coffman is one of nine defendants whose prison sentence exceeds one year. Coffman, a Vietnam War veteran who served in the U.S. Army, pleaded guilty in November to possession of an unregistered firearm and carrying a pistol without a license. He was carrying a loaded handgun and revolver without a license as he walked in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, according to prosecutors. He isn’t accused of entering the Capitol or joining the mob during the riot that day. When Coffman parked his truck a few blocks from the Capitol on the morning of Jan. 6, it contained a handgun, a rifle, a shotgun, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a crossbow, machetes, a stun gun and a cooler containing eleven mason jars with holes punched in the lids, according to prosecutors. Each jar contained a mixture of gasoline and Styrofoam, which are components of the homemade incendiary devices called Molotov cocktails, prosecutors said.

Coffman didn’t have a criminal record before this case.

“At my age, one of the most precious (things) we possess is time, and I have wasted almost a whole precious year,” he wrote in his letter to the judge.