Former Tennessee sheriff’s deputy Ronald Colton McAbee, referred to as a “terrorist” by a U.S. District judge in 2021, who tried to rescue a dying Rosanne Boyland at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, is considering a plea agreement that would stave off his October trial date.
Mr. McAbee, 29, of Unionville, Tennessee, had been scheduled for an Oct. 2 trial on Jan. 6 charges that include assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer; two counts of civil disorder; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; and committing an act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings.
Mr. McAbee’s wife, Sarah, said that final details were still being worked out. The Sept. 13 hearing is still on the docket as a pretrial conference, she said.
“There has been nothing in stone yet,” Mrs. McAbee told The Epoch Times. “The attorneys are still going back and forth.”
When discussing video evidence that purported to show Mr. McAbee dragging a police officer into the crowd, the judge remarked: “So it appears clearly to this court that the defendant is pulling the officer back into the crowd of other terrorists.”
Prosecutors argued that Mr. McAbee had assaulted Metropolitan Police Department Officer Andrew Wyatt. They said that, after the officer fell at the tunnel entrance, Mr. McAbee—who had a broken shoulder from a car accident nine days earlier—pulled him down the concrete stairs into a hostile crowd.
“What makes the government’s case weak is the fact that the videos actually exonerate Mr. McAbee of the very allegations made against him, and Mr. McAbee is motivated to appear for trial, take the stand, and narrate those videos for [the] jury,” William Shipley—then Mr. McAbee’s attorney— wrote in an unsuccessful May 2022 motion to have his client released from jail.
Judge Sullivan was later removed from Mr. McAbee’s case, which was assigned to Judge Contreras.
In September 2022, Mr. McAbee was maced and knocked to the ground by staff at the District of Columbia jail because he did not wear a face mask when walking from his cell to a nearby cart to obtain his medication. Mrs. McAbee has said she is considering legal action against the jail for the attack.
Ms. Boyland was beaten with a wooden walking stick by Metropolitan Police Department Officer Lila Morris just before protesters pulled the injured woman to safety and began performing CPR. Ms. Boyland later died at a Washington hospital.
