FBI
- Thomas Siddick of Buffalo, New York, was arrested on Friday on five different charges.
- He was caught assaulting police officer Mike Fanone on the bodycam he was wearing.
- Although initially denying he stole the badge, he later retrieved it and handed it over to the FBI.
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A man charged with assaulting a cop during the Capitol riot has admitted that he buried the officer's police badge in his backyard.
Thomas Siddick of Buffalo, New York, was arrested on Friday on five different charges including assaulting, resisting or impeding officers and taking a thing of value by force and violence or intimidation.
Sibick was caught assaulting Officer Mike Fanone of Washington DC's Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) on video captured by the bodycam he was wearing, according to the criminal complaint.
He took Fanone's police badge and radio while he was being beaten and tased by a group of rioters who had pulled him away from the police line, causing him to have a concussion and be hospitalized.
Sibick told the FBI that he had heard someone say "We got one! We got one! Kill him with his own gun!," but he was just trying to help.
He is not accused of beating or tasing Fanone, 40, a father of four daughters who said he yelled to the crowd that he had children to "try to appeal to someone's humanity," according to CBS News.
He said some rioters surrounded him to help him leave and he spent a day and a half in hospital following the attack. Through WUSA9, Fanone told them: "Thank you, but f--- you for being there."
Sibbick was first questioned on January 27, at which point he denied even being in Washington DC on the night of the insurrection.
This is despite him posting images of himself on Instagram holding a US Capitol Police shield and attempting to enter the building.
He then had a second interview in early February whereby he maintained that he had not been involved in the attack on Fanone.
However, later the month, Siddick said he wanted to "recant" his initial statement and admitted he took the badge and radio.
Although he originally said he thrown them in a trash can in a hotel dumspter on DC's Constitution Avenue out of fear of being arrested, he later told an FBI agent that he "wanted to do the right thing."
He said he "had buried the badge in his backyard," purchased a metal detector to find it, dug it up, and wanted to return it.
A federal magistrate judge in New York ordered Thomas Sibick to be released, the Huffington Post noted. However, the government filed an emergency appeal on Friday asking the DC judge to order him back into custody on account of being charged with a violent crime.