WASHINGTON — A former sheriff’s deputy pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot on Monday, but will go to trial next week on a second count of assault.
Ronald Colton McAbee, 29, of Unionville, Tennessee, appeared in federal court Monday morning alongside his attorney Benjamin Schiffelbein to plead guilty to one felony count of assaulting and officer and one misdemeanor count of engaging in an act of physical violence on Capitol grounds. McAbee acknowledged he struck a DC Police officer in the head and torso while he was moving toward another officer who had been pulled out of the Lower West Terrace Tunnel and was being assaulted by other rioters.
McAbee will begin trial next week on the remaining counts against him, including a second, more serious, count for allegedly assaulting the downed officer while wearing gloves with metal-reinforced knuckles. Schiffelbein said McAbee intends to take the stand and argue that, although he pleaded guilty to assaulting the first officer seconds prior, he was intending to render aid to the second officer who had been pulled into the crowd.
In furtherance of that argument, Schiffelbein asked U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras to allow him to enter evidence of McAbee performing CPR 10 minutes later on Rosanne Boyland, a 34-year-old woman who collapsed near the entrance of the tunnel and was pronounced dead on scene. A D.C. medical examiner determined Boyland died of acute amphetamine intoxication. Prosecutors have sought to bar evidence about Boyland from the trial. Contreras said Monday he would take the matter under advisement.
McAbee, who was a deputy with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office in Tennessee on Jan. 6, was arrested in August 2021 and indicted alongside six other men in connection with assaults on police officers near the Lower West Terrace Tunnel entrance during the Capitol riot. One of those co-defendants, Michael Lopatic, of Pennsylvania, died in July 2022 while awaiting trial. The remainder have been convicted or pleaded guilty – mostly recently Clayton Ray Mullins, 54, of Kentucky, who pleaded guilty earlier this month to helping other rioters drag the downed officer McAbee is accused of assaulting in the crowd. In July, Peter Stager, of Arkansas, was sentenced to four years in prison for beating that officer wit ha flagpole while he was lying on the ground.
McAbee will be sentenced on the two counts he pleaded guilty to and any remaining counts that result in conviction at trial on Feb. 29. He will receive credit toward any sentence imposed for the more than two years he has already served in pretrial detention since his arrest.