A Florida man who fled after being convicted in a Jan. 6 case, triggering a six-week manhunt, was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday, federal prosecutors said.
Christopher Worrell, 52, was arrested at his home in Naples on Sept. 28, a little more than six weeks after he cut off his ankle monitor four days before his sentencing date and disappeared, officials said.
A judge in Washington had convicted Worrell in May on charges connected with his assault on police during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Worrell was arrested “when he attempted to covertly return to his home,” the FBI field office in Tampa said at the time of his arrest.
Worrell, who had gone to Washington with other members of the Proud Boys, sprayed an irritating pepper gel at Capitol Police officers, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said, as the pro-Trump mob attacked police that day.
After another Proud Boy member assaulted police defending a stairwell and the mob overwhelmed the police line, Worrell recorded himself on video saying, “Yeah! Taking the Capitol!” prosecutors said.
Worrell was convicted at a bench trial on six felony counts and a misdemeanor.
An attorney listed as representing Worrell did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Thursday.
Prosecutors wrote in a memorandum ahead of sentencing that when Worrell fled, “he apparently had no intention of ever turning himself in.”
The FBI had staked out Worrell’s residence, and it caught him when he tried to return, but he faked a drug overdose to try to fool officers and FBI agents who entered the home, prosecutors wrote.
He ended up staying in a hospital for five days before he was cleared by doctors, which prosecutors called a “delaying tactic.”
