A Missouri man who crashed a rental truck into a gate near the White House with aspirations to overthrow the government was sentenced to eight years in prison Thursday, prosecutors said.
Sai Varshith Kandula, 20, of St. Louis, pleaded guilty in May to one count of intentional damage or depredation of United States property in the incident on May 22, 2023. Prosecutors agreed to seek only a sentence of eight years.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington said their goal was “to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States and replace it with a dictatorship fueled by Nazi ideology.”
“It was less a ‘plan’ than a set of delusional thoughts united by a common thread,” Kandula’s attorney wrote in a sentencing memorandum. After his arrest, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, the attorney wrote.
Kandula, an Indian citizen who was a legal permanent resident of the US with a green card at the time, crashed a U-Haul truck into the gate at the intersection of H Street NW and 16th Street NW around 9:35 p.m. the prosecutor’s office said. .
The truck was disabled and Kandula got out and pulled a Nazi swastika flag from his backpack before he was arrested, he said.
No one was injured.
Prosecutors wrote in their own memo that Kandula nearly ran over two pedestrians and that an eight-year sentence was warranted because of the severity of his actions and for deterrent purposes.
Kandula’s attorney wrote in the sentencing memorandum that he will most likely be deported due to the conviction and will return to India to live with his family.
