CLOSURE: Officer brutally beaten in Jan. 6 riot confronts attacker in court
Former Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone just confronted the facilitator of the brutal attack that he received during the capitol insurrection on January 6th last year. Fanone asked the judge to give the convicted insurrectionist, Albuquerque Head, the maximum sentence allowed.
“Your Honor, I would ask you to show Mr. Head, the same mercy that he showed me on January 6,” Fanone said Thursday. “Which in case there’s any question in this courtroom — is none.”
Head, a Kingsport, Tennessee resident, put Officer Fanone in a chokehold before dragging him outside the Capitol building and throwing the helpless officer to the angry mob, yelling “Hey! I got one.”
The former addict isn’t the only Capitol rioter convicted in Fanone’s attack. At the September sentencing of his co-defendant, Kyle Young, the former officer also asked U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to impose a harsh sentence on his attacker.
Fanone told the court that the brutal assault “cost me my career, it cost me my faith in law enforcement and many of the institutions I dedicated two decades of my life to serving,” ABC News reported.
What made Head’s actions even more heinous was the betrayal of Officer Fanone’s trust.
Just before leaving the law enforcement officer to be beaten, tased, and kicked — Head told him, “Hey, I’m going to try to help you out here, you hear me?”
To which Fanone replied, “Thank you,”
At Thursday’s sentencing, the still-affected former officer said:
“‘I would trade all this attention to return to policing,’ Fanone said at the sentencing of Tennessee resident Albuquerque Head. ‘But I can’t do that. And the catalyst for the loss of my career and the suffering that I’ve endured in the past 18 months is Albuquerque Head,'” according to ABC News.
Head’s legal team argued that their client wasn’t responsible for what happened to Fanone after taking him outside, but Judge Jackson disagreed.
According to The Washington Post, “I cannot accept that for one moment,” Judge Jackson said. “When he exposed him to the mercy of the crowd? That forced walk down the steps changed Officer Fanone’s life forever.”
The vicious attack left Officer Fanone with brain damage, and body camera footage shows Head doing nothing to help during the assault. He, in fact, tried to rejoin the beating, but Fanone had been rescued.
“Mr. Head had the presence of mind,” Fanone told the judge, “to say maybe there was someone in the crowd that would offer me help … Mr. Head had every intention of dragging me into the mob and subject me to a brutal beating.”
To avoid a sentence of up to 20 years, Mr. Head pleaded guilty to the assault. Judge Jackson sentenced the father of two to 7.5 years in prison. Six months shorter than the eight-year maximum.
Original reporting by Alexander Mallin at ABC News.
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