- A Kentucky woman was arrested on Capitol riot charges on Wednesday.
- Prosecutors say Shelly Stallings pepper-sprayed police officers outside the Capitol on January 6.
- She faces six charges related to the insurrection.
A Kentucky woman accused of pepper spraying a line of police officers outside the Capitol building on January 6 was arrested on Wednesday — more than a year after the deadly insurrection.
Shelly Stallings, 42, faces six charges related to the attack, including assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers using a dangerous weapon, disorderly conduct in a restricted building, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building with a deadly or dangerous weapon, and civil disorder.
Stallings along with a second individual, Markus Maly, 47, of Virginia, were named as additional defendants in a superseding indictment for a case that already included two other defendants, including Stallings’ husband, Peter Schwartz, and Jeffrey Brown of California, according to the Department of Justice.
Schwartz was arrested in February 2021, while Brown was detained in August of the same year. Maly was arrested last month and initially charged in a criminal complaint, prosecutors said. All three previously pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The four defendants named in the indictment are all accused of deploying pepper spray against a line of police officers who were attempting to secure an area outside the Capitol building, according to the Justice Department.
Stallings’ husband, Schwartz, was arrested last year after an anonymous tipster told the FBI that he was supposed to be at a rehabilitation center in Kentucky on the day of the attack, according to court documents. Instead, the tipster saw Schwartz in photos on the steps of the Capitol that day.
The anonymous source identified Schwartz as a traveling welder and a convicted felon who was released from prison due to COVID-19, court records say. Prosecutors say they received several additional tips regarding Schwartz from people who recognized him from his Kentucky booking photo. His Capitol riot-related case is currently pending in federal court.
Stallings made her first initial court appearance Wednesday in the Western District of Kentucky, according to the Justice Department. Her case is being prosecuted by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
An attorney for Stallings was not listed as of Wednesday. Insider reached out to contacts appearing to belong to Stallings for comment.
More than 770 people have been arrested in connection with the attack and 212 rioters have pleaded guilty.
Powered by WPeMatico