Grand jury charges former Kentucky deputy with punching people, cover-up scheme
A Kentucky deputy sheriff punched people without justification and lied to cover up an assault, a federal grand jury charged Thursday.
The grand jury indicted Tanner M. Abbott, 30, of Danville, on four charges of violating people’s rights by hitting them and one charge of depriving a person of his rights with an illegal search of his hotel room.
Abbott also faces a charge of filing a false report to cover up the alleged illegal search and one charge of conspiring with someone else to file a false report about punching someone in the head.
Abbott directed a co-conspirator to fill out a citation saying that while Abbott was arresting a person, the person advanced toward Abbott aggressively, which wasn’t true, the indictment charged.
The other person, who was not named in the indictment, filled out the form with the false information, according to the indictment.
The incidents covered in the charges occurred between January and April 2021. The Advocate-Messenger newspaper in Danville reported that Abbott was fired later that year.
The indictment cites three instances in which Abbott allegedly punched people without legal cause and one instance in which he caused a person’s “head and body to forcibly collide with a wall.”
On the charge of filing a false report, the indictment says Abbott wrote in a citation that a person gave him consent to search his hotel room, when in fact that was not true.
The indictment did not disclose the names of the victims.
The charge of falsifying a record is punishable by up to 20 years in prison if Abbott is convicted.
The alleged civil rights violations carry a sentence of up to 10 years each, and the top penalty on the conspiracy charge would be five years.
