Relative: White House intruder is Army veteran, has PTSD

WASHINGTON – The intruder with a knife who scaled a White House fence and made it through the front doors was an Army veteran diagnosed with combat trauma, but authorities said Saturday the case was still under investigation.

A family member in California said Omar J. Gonzalez, 42, of Copperas Cove, Texas, near Fort Hood, has been homeless and living alone in the wild and in campgrounds with his two dogs for the last two years.

“We talked to him on 9/11, and he said he planned to go to a Veterans Administration hospital to seek treatments,” said the family member, who asked that he not be identified pending completion of the Secret Service investigation.

“He’s been depressed for quite some time,” the relative said. “He’d been taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. I suspect he stopped taking it, otherwise this wouldn’t have happened.”

Secret Service officials said Gonzalez climbed a fence on the north side of the White House at about 7:20 p.m. Friday and sprinted roughly 100 yards and into the building before he was captured by officers.

“Gonzalez failed to comply with responding Secret Service Uniformed Division Officers’ verbal commands, and was physically apprehended after entering the White House North Portico doors,” agency officials said in a statement Saturday.

President Barack Obama was not on the grounds at the time.

Officials initially said Gonzalez was unarmed, but a criminal complaint filed Saturday said he had a 3 1/2-inch folding knife in his right front pants pocket.

Gonzalez has been charged with unlawful entry to the White House complex.

An Army spokesman confirmed that Gonzalez served on active duty and was retired in 2012.

Gonzalez joined the Army in the mid-1990s, the family member said. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after his first tour in Iraq. “But they sent him back for a second tour,” the relative said.

During a second tour, about three years ago, Gonzalez was reportedly injured by a homemade explosive device. “His job was running patrols in Baghdad when his Humvee was hit,” the family member said.

“A portion of his foot was amputated,” he said, “and the evidence is the limp you see in the video of him running across the White House lawn.”

Gonzalez was honorably discharged and initially rented a house in Copperas Cove. After that, he traveled around the country in a truck, sleeping in campgrounds, the family member said.

Less than 24 hours after Gonzalez’s arrest, a second man was apprehended after he drove up to a White House gate Saturday and refused to leave, the Secret Service said, prompting bomb technicians in full gear to search the vehicle as agents shut down nearby streets.

There were no indications the two events were connected. Yet the pair of incidents in short succession only intensified the scrutiny of the Secret Service, which is still struggling to rehabilitate its image following a series of allegations of misconduct by agents in recent years, including agents on Obama’s detail.

“Unfortunately, they are failing to do their job,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House subpanel on national security oversight, told the AP. “These are good men and women, but the Secret Service leadership has a lot of questions to answer.”