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Ronald Colton McAbee, a 27-year-old 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.

From Williamson County sheriff’s deputy to storming the capitol

McAbee started at the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office on Nov. 9, 2020, and worked with the department until March 23, according to court documents. Before coming to Tennessee, he was employed as a sheriff’s deputy at the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia.

McAbee was on leave from the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office during the Capitol riot because of an injured shoulder and hip from a car accident on Dec. 27, 2020.

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. The man was also wearing black gloves with hard metal-colored knuckles.

The video shows on Jan. 6 the man tried to drag an MPD officer into the crowd as other officers tried to bring their colleague back to the line. When an officer attempted to help the fallen colleague, the man appeared to jump up and swing at the officer.

Later, the man appeared bent over apparently in pain in the archway of the Capitol, court documents stated.

As the crowd surged at the police line in front of the Capitol, the man appeared to hurt his shoulder and said it was broken. He then pointed to the sheriff patch and told MPD officers he couldn’t go back the way he came.

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