Belligerent NC man who punched officers during Jan. 6 Capitol riots sentenced to prison

A North Carolina man who grew belligerent and joined his equally angry wife in attacking officers during the pro-Trump Capitol riots 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 impeding 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 on home detention and pay $2,000 in restitution, the judge ruled.

Bishop is scheduled to be sentenced early next year, according to court documents.

Rioter punched officer in the head, yanked riot shield away

The couple grew violent in the Rotunda of the Capitol building the afternoon of the riots, according to arrest affidavits filed by the FBI against the couple.

Davis first tried to grab an officer’s baton as he, Bishop and other rioters pressed against a police line, the FBI agent said. Minutes later, Davis punched a DC Metropolitan Police Department officer in the face shield and refused law enforcement orders to leave the building, according to the affidavit.

Bishop grabbed an officer’s baton with both hands after telling the officer, “You can’t turn on Americans,” according to an FBI arrest warrant affidavit against her. With help from Davis, she also “forcibly pulled a riot shield from the hands of another police officer at the entryway to the Rotunda,” an FBI agent said in the affidavit.

Davis also punched another Metropolitan Police officer in the head, according to a news release by 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 the efforts of police.” prosecutors said in the release.

‘This is our one chance,’ woman told fellow rioters

Police pushed Davis and Bishop from the Rotunda, prosecutors said.

After leaving the Capitol building, Bishop climbed on top of a police car and yelled to the crowd through a megaphone to stay in the building, according to the affidavit.

“Why is everybody walking the wrong way?” she asked nearby rioters, the affidavit states “This is our once chance” and “I’m ready to go back in, because this is our f------ building.”

The couple returned to the East Rotunda doors and tried with others to push through a line of police, according to court documents.

“Davis then made his way to the front of the line of rioters and punched a riot shield held by an officer three times,” according to the news release.

Davis later filmed a group of police officers with his cell phone camera, according to court documents. He then turned the camera around, filmed his fist and said, “Them knuckles right there, from one of those... faces at the Capitol.”

The FBI arrested the couple in Snow Hill in December 2023. The town is between Goldsboro and Greenville, 240 miles east of Charlotte.

Trump provoked supporters to violence, U.S. House committee found

The couple joined several thousand people that day who ascended on the Capitol building in Washington after a speech by then-President Donald Trump.

The crowd broke through police barricades, breached the building and attempted to stop the joint session of Congress where electoral votes were being counted in the 2020 presidential election.

Members of the U.S. House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack found that Trump provoked his supporters to violence through his false allegations of fraud in the election.

Four people died at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, — a woman shot by a police officer, two men of natural causes and a woman who died from an accidental amphetamine overdose. Brian Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer assaulted at the scene, died a day later of a stroke that was ruled natural, according to officials.

At least 1,532 people from nearly every state have been charged in connection with the breach of the Capitol, prosecutors said.