Federal agents this week arrested a Tennessee sheriff’s deputy for assaulting a fellow law enforcement officer and then attempting to use his status to gain access to the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot, The Tennessean reports.
Citing a motion filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office Wednesday, the newspaper reported that 27-year-old Ronald Colton McAbee, a Williamson County sheriff’s deputy, was arrested Aug. 17 after the FBI received a tip he was the man in officer-worn body camera footage who attempted to fight a Metropolitan Police Department officer and drag another into the mob storming the Capitol.
The U.S. attorney’s office pre-trial motion argued McAbee should be held without bail because he was a “spoke in the wheel” that caused the Jan. 6 riot and was a “threat to the peaceful functioning of our community.”
McAbee is part of a seven-person indictment group all charged with assaulting officers on the day of the insurrection. His co-defendants included Jack Wade Whitton, who is accused of using a crutch to attack an MPD officer, and Jeffrey Sabol, who is accused of holding a baton across an officer’s neck.
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McAbee was on “sick” leave from the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office during the Capitol riot, according to the report.
Video captured during the riot shows the man the FBI identified as McAbee wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat and black tactical vest with a sheriff patch and an insignia with the Roman numeral III encircled in stars.
The emblem is associated with the three percenters, an anti-government militia movement. McAbee was also wearing black gloves with hard metal-colored knuckles.
The U.S attorney’s office said they had arrested 570 individuals in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the U.S. Capitol’s breach, including over 170 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.
