Though arrested and charged for murder in 2019, Matthew Beddingfield of North Carolina was released pending trial. He's believed to have been at the Capitol riot of January 6th and assaulted police officers with a flag pole and another metal object. He was dubbed #SoggyKidInsider (because he was doused in pepper spray) and #NaziGrayHat (because he appeared to give a Sieg Heil salute several times). When his images were put into PimEyes, a facial recognition website, one of Matthew Beddingfield’s mug shots popped up. The FBI has not positively identified him yet or arrested him. His father, Jason Beddingfield, was at the riot but denies his son was there as well.
Source: Huffington Post
At 19, Matthew Jason Beddingfield was charged with first-degree attempted murder for allegedly shooting another teenager in the head in the parking lot of a North Carolina Walmart. Police said Beddingfield fled the scene in a Dodge Charger, but turned himself in the next morning, on Dec. 14, 2019. He was held in jail on $1 million bond, and was released a few weeks later when the bond was lowered to $100,000. He was still awaiting trial when the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States.
The shooting received heavy news coverage in North Carolina, and numerous mug shots and photos of Beddingfield appeared online. The defendant’s father, Jason Beddingfield, spoke to reporters and said his son had shot the 17-year-old because he’d been robbed.
Just over a year after Matthew Beddingfield was released from jail ahead of trial, a mob of insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol in support of outgoing President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Jason Beddingfield was there on Jan. 6. “We are here to take this country back from those commie bastards,” Beddingfield, 52, wrote in a Facebook post that featured photos of the crowd in front of the Washington Monument for Trump’s speech.
It's worth reading the entire long piece. The software that identified him is not infallible but gives a high degree of certainty that it is Matthew Beddingfield. The FBI will make the final determination, of course. Online sleuths are somewhat frustrated by the pace of their investigations but that's just how it is.
NEW: HuffPost, working with citizen sleuths, has identified a man out on bail on an attempted murder charge as a likely suspect in the Capitol attack. Story with @JessReports: #SeditionHunters #SoggyKidInsider #NaziGrayHat https://t.co/auVBZTNz8s
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) March 26, 2021
