Falkville man pleads guilty to assaulting officer during Capitol riot
By Eric Fleischauer
For the Enquirer
A Falkville man whose participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot was tracked in part because he was wearing an Alabama Crimson Tide sweatshirt pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to a felony that could result in a prison sentence of up to eight years.
Bobby Wayne Russell, 49, entered a plea in the District of Columbia to one felony count of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers, and aiding and abetting, according to court records. U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth scheduled a sentencing hearing for Nov. 17.
“His actions and the actions of others disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress convened to ascertain and count the electoral votes related to the presidential election,” according to a statement issued Tuesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
In the plea agreement, Russell acknowledges assaulting Michelle Turner, an officer with the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department. A body camera showed him, with his Alabama sweatshirt, pressing his back against a bicycle-rack barricade and clinging to it as officers tried to remove him and as Turner sprayed him with pepper spray, according to the plea agreement.
“Due to the involvement of other rioters, the barricade broke apart. The defendant grabbed the jacket of MPD Officer Michelle Turner, pulling her down with him as he fell headlong down a short flight of stairs. They both ended up on the ground,” according to the plea agreement, and Turner said he tried to grab the pepper spray canister from her. These events took place at about noon on Jan. 6, a statement of offense appended to the plea agreement said.
At about 3:25 p.m., bodycam video shows Russell on the Upper West Terrace of the Capitol, outside the doors to the Senate wing. Russell was recorded telling one officer, “I’m not scared of you, and I’m not weak,” and then joining in a chant of, “Whose house? Our house.”
Five minutes later, according to the plea agreement, Russell said to officers, “Did y’all think it was gonna come to this? I knew it was gonna come to this.”
At 4:20 p.m., according to the plea agreement, officers guarding the Senate wing area formed a line and walked toward the rioters, shouting for them to move back. Russell resisted, pushing his back and buttocks into the riot shield of an officer.
“There’s more of us than you guys; you’re gonna lose,” Russell told the officer, and then continued to resist law enforcement, the plea agreement says.
Russell was arrested Aug. 24, 2022. According to pleadings filed at the time of his arrest, he was initially identified as having been at the Capitol on Jan. 6 through a subpoena of Google data that identified the location and phone numbers of cellphones. He was additionally identified due to his posting on Facebook a picture of himself, wearing the Crimson Tide sweatshirt, on the Capitol grounds.
While Russell’s maximum sentence would be eight years in prison, the plea agreement says sentencing guidelines recommend a sentence of 37 to 46 months. That recommended sentence was enhanced, according to the plea agreement, because Russell had three prior Morgan County felony convictions, all in 2011. Two were for possession of a controlled substance and one was for third-degree burglary.
In the plea agreement, Russell agrees that the Jan. 6 riot caused $2,881,360 in damage to the U.S. Capitol, and he agrees to pay restitution of $2,000 in addition to any fines imposed by the court.
Russell was the second Falkville-area man to plead guilty in connection with the Jan. 6 riot. Lonnie Leroy Coffman, 73, was arrested on Jan. 6 with 11 Molotov cocktails, a semiautomatic rifle and a handgun in his pickup truck, and two handguns in his pockets. He was sentenced last year to three years and 10 months after pleading guilty to two federal charges of possession of unregistered firearms related to the Molotov cocktails found in his vehicle and later at his home near Falkville. Coffman also pleaded guilty to carrying a pistol in D.C. without a license.
In the 29 months since Jan. 6, 2021, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, more than 1,000 individuals have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including nearly 350 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.
