A federal judge sentenced a District man Friday to 18 months in prison for driving onto the National Mall near pedestrians at high speed.
Curtis Lear, 30, drove his black Jeep Patriot onto the National Mall near Seventh Street SW on the evening of June 21 amid an annual barbecue event attended by hundreds of pedestrians. Lear was speeding and making sharp turns, the Justice Department said.
“As soon as he started racing up and down the grass, everybody started screaming and getting out of the way because they were afraid of getting hit,” witness Ferdous Al-Faruque told Washington’s WRC-TV in the initial aftermath of the incident…