WASHINGTON — A Colorado geophysicist who tried to flee the country to avoid charges connected to the Capitol riot was sentenced Thursday to more than five years in prison for assaulting a downed officer.
Jeffrey Sabol, 53, of Kittredge, Colorado, was indicted in January 2021 as part of what became a nine-defendant case alleging multiple assaults on police at the entrance to the Lower West Terrace Tunnel of the U.S. Capitol. The tunnel was the scene of some of the most prolonged and brutal attacks on officers during the Capitol riot, including the crushing of D.C. Police Officer Daniel Hodges in a doorframe and the electroshock assault on former Officer Michael Fanone.
Sabol was charged with assaulting another DC Police officer, identified as “B.M.” in court filings, by grabbing him and dragging him down a set of stairs and then repeatedly punching him. In charging documents, investigators said a top-down photo of the assault shows Sabol holding a police baton against the back of the officer’s neck.
In an interview with police following his arrest in New York on Jan. 11, 2021, Sabol allegedly claimed he was only “patting” the officer on the back and that he had answered a call to battle “because he was a patriot warrior.”
Sabol was convicted in a stipulated trial in August of obstruction of an official proceeding, robbery and assaulting a police officer with a dangerous weapon – all felonies. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop more than a dozen other counts against him.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras sentenced Sabol to 63 months, or a little more than five years, in prison. He will receive credit for more than three years spent in pretrial detention following his arrest in early 2021 while attempting to flee the country.
Sabol was arrested in New York in January 2021 after flying to Boston from his home in Colorado with the intent to flee to Switzerland because he was “paranoid that he was going to be charged with sedition,” according to prosecutors. In court documents, prosecutors said Sabol rented a car and left the airport after seeing police he worried were looking for him. He was arrested more than 200 miles away in New City, New York, after police received a report of a vehicle driving erratically.
According to charging documents, police found Sabol covered in blood and suffering from lacerations to his legs and arms. Sabol allegedly told the arresting officers, “I am tired, I am done fighting” and that he had been “fighting tyranny in the DC Capitol.” Sabol has been held in pretrial detention since his arrest.
Sabol was scheduled to be the last of nine defendants in the case to be sentenced, but the sentencing for another man, Jack Wade Whitton, was continued this week. Other defendants have also received lengthy sentences, including Ronald Colton McAbee, a former sheriff’s deputy who was sentenced to 60 months behind bars for assaulting two officers, and Clayton Ray Mullins, a 54-year-old Kentucky man who received 30 months behind bars as part of a plea deal.