A Pennsylvania man arrested for assaulting several federal law enforcement officers during the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol has a long history of violence, particularly against women, court documents reviewed by the Daily Beast reveal.
Ryan Samsel, a 38-year-old man from Bristol Borough, Pennsylvania, 23 miles north of Philadelphia, is accused of assaulting a police officer and giving him a concussion. He faces charges including assaulting a federal officer, obstructing law enforcement, and obstructing a legal proceeding. He is seeking release on bond pending trial.
According to documents filed with the court on Tuesday, prosecutors allege “a pattern of Samsel choking and beating women to the point of loss of consciousness, of many hospital visits for many victims, of chipped and missing teeth, and of Samsel even breaking into one victim’s home multiple times to assault her.”
Samsel has alleged that he was beaten in prison by guards while he’s been remanded prior to his trial. Samsel suffered a broken nose, dislocated jaw, and seizures from the alleged beating by guards, which he claims stemmed from him complaining that the guards took too long to get him a roll of toilet paper.
Prosecutors says that regardless of Samsel’s alleged prison assault, he still poses a threat to the public. They point to the fact that he was convicted of assault and reckless endangerment “after he held a victim against her will for five hours, choking her to the point of unconsciousness, pushing her, beating her, and chipping her teeth.”
As the Daily Beast reports, he was convicted three years later on similar charges for allegedly “choking and beating his pregnant girlfriend.”
“The allegations of that assault involved Samsel smashing a hot pizza in the victim’s face, beating the victim, pouring a beer over her head, and eventually throwing her into the canal, where he then hopped down and held her head under,” the motion states. “When Samsel finally stopped holding her, the victim ran into the street barefoot and found a police vehicle. She desperately tried to open the door of the vehicle and the officer saw her and unlocked it so she could get in.”
He has two other arrests on his record, one involving jumping into a man’s car and beating him resulting in the loss of two teeth in 2007 and choking another woman to the point of unconsciousness in 2015. In 2019, a woman told police Samsel raped her multiple times and threatened to kill her if she told anyone; that case is still unresolved.
During the Capitol assault, Samsel allegedly pushed a police barricade into a female police officer, knocking her down. She later passed out with a concussion while processing a protestor she had taken into custody.