Jeffrey Sabol, a 61-year-old geophysicist who was captured on video dragging a police officer down steps and then holding a police baton against another officer’s neck, claimed to federal investigators that he was just “patting him on the back,” the Daily Beast reports.
Preparing to flee to Zurich, Switzerland to avoid charges, Sabol was arrested at a New York hospital where he was taken for treatment after attempting to harm himself with a razor blade on January 11th. Police pulled him over after his car was driving erratically. While being treated, he admitted to assaulting officers during the insurrection.
Sabol had bought a ticket to fly to Switzerland after video emerged of him dragging a DC Metropolitan Police officer down the steps of the Capitol, with the officer subsequently being beaten by an American flag wielded an insurrectionist.
“Once at the bottom of the stairs, Sabol claims he ‘covered the police officer for his own safety’ while others hit the police officer with poles,” the complaint reads, though video shows Sabol keeping the officer on the ground by putting the officer’s baton to the back of his neck.
When Sabol was pulled over, he had razor blades, his passport and an airline ticket, among other things.
“While officers aided Sabol, he made several spontaneous statements to include but not limited to: ‘I am tired, I am done fighting,’ ‘My wounds are self-inflicted,’ I was ‘fighting tyranny in the DC Capital,’” according to the complaint.