A North Carolina man who became combative and joined his equally angry wife in attacking officers during the pro-Trump Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to prison on Friday, prosecutors said.
Curtis Davis, a 45-year-old from Snow Hill in eastern North Carolina, and Tanya Bishop, 48, each pleaded guilty in June to assaulting, resisting or obstructing certain officers, court records show.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Davis to two years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Davis must serve the first six months of his release in home confinement and pay $2,000 in restitution, the judge ruled.
According to court documents, Bishop will be sentenced early next year.
Rioter punched officer in the head and tore away riot shield
The couple became violent in the Capitol Rotunda on the afternoon of the riot, according to arrest affidavits filed against the couple by the FBI.
Davis first tried to grab an officer’s baton as he, Bishop and other rioters pushed against a police line, the FBI agent said. Minutes later, Davis punched a D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officer in the face shield and refused law enforcement orders to leave the building, the affidavit said.
Bishop grabbed an officer’s baton with both hands after telling the officer, “You can’t turn on the Americans,” according to an FBI arrest warrant affidavit for her. With Davis’s help, she also “forcibly pulled a riot shield from the hands of another police officer at the entrance to the Rotunda,” an FBI agent said in the affidavit.
Davis also struck another Metropolitan Police officer in the head, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia.
“Davis then used the shield to press against the backs of a line of rioters in an attempt to resist police efforts.” Prosecutors said this in the press release.
“This is our only chance,” the woman told fellow rioters
Police pushed Davis and Bishop out of the Rotunda, prosecutors said.
After leaving the Capitol building, Bishop climbed onto a police car and shouted through a bullhorn at the crowd to stay in the building, the affidavit said.
“Why is everyone walking in the wrong direction?” she asked nearby rioters. The affidavit states: “This is our once in a lifetime opportunity” and “I’m ready to get back in there because this is our damn building.”
The couple returned to the doors of the East Rotunda and, along with others, tried to break through a line of police, according to court documents.
“Davis then moved to the front of the line of rioters and punched a riot shield held by an officer three times,” the news release said.
According to court documents, Davis later filmed a group of police officers with his cell phone camera. Then he turned the camera around, filmed his fist and said, “Those knuckles over there, from one of those… faces in the Capitol.”
The FBI arrested the couple in December 2023 in Snow Hill. The city is located between Goldsboro and Greenville, 250 miles east of Charlotte.
Trump provoked supporters to violence, US House of Representatives committee found
The couple joined several thousand people that day who climbed the Capitol in Washington after a speech by then-President Donald Trump.
The crowd broke through police barricades, entered the building and tried to stop the joint session of Congress where electoral votes were being counted for the 2020 presidential election.
Members of the US House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6 attack found that Trump provoked his supporters to violence through his false claims of election fraud.
On January 6, 2021, four people died in the Capitol: a woman who was shot by a police officer, two men from natural causes, and a woman who died from an accidental amphetamine overdose. Brian Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who was attacked at the scene, died a day later of a stroke that officials said was believed to be natural.
At least 1,532 people from nearly every state have been charged in connection with the breach of the Capitol, prosecutors said.
