Man with Santa Rosa ties indicted for assaulting police during Jan. 6 Capitol riot

A Mill Valley man with ties to Santa Rosa was indicted Friday on charges of assaulting law enforcement and other crimes during the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol.

Evan Neumann, 49, was captured on video punching officers and using a barricade as a battering ram at the west front of the Capitol Building.

Neumann, son of the late Santa Rosa hotelier Claus Neumann, who ran the iconic Los Robles Lodge on Cleveland Avenue and the Hotel La Rose in Railroad Square, was indicted on a total of 14 counts, including engaging in physical violence in a restricted building, and “assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers,” according to a statement from the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Initially charged in a criminal complaint filed on March 23, Neumann has yet to make a court appearance, having reportedly fled the country on Feb. 16. Authorities believe he is in Belarus. As first reported in the Daily Beast, Neumann appeared in November in the Belarusian state TV special, “Goodbye, America,” in which he expressed his desire to stay in the country, promising to be “a productive and good citizen.”

If returned to the United States, he predicted, he would face certain torture, he told his Belarussian interviewer. “And I’m not strong enough to withstand torture.”

That’s a far cry from the bluster he exhibited on Jan. 6, when Neumann was videotaped shouting at a Capitol police officer, “I’m willing to die, are you?”

Evan Neumann could not be reached for comment. His brother, Mark, did not reply Monday to a voicemail.

The 16-page criminal complaint and arrest warrant filed in March describes a man later identified as Evan Neumann appearing at the Capitol in a red “Make America Great Again” hat, and having a gas mask in his possession.

Police body-cam footage show Neumann telling one officer that the officer is “defending the people who are gonna kill your f------ children, they are gonna rape them, they are gonna imprison them.”

Neumann refused orders to move away from barricade, saying “you can’t tell me what to do, you piece of s---.” He states that the officers “kneel to Antifa because they’re little bitches,” before threatening one by telling him he will be “overrun” by the crowd. Neumann then states his willingness to die that day.

At approximately 1:57 p.m., according to the complaint, Neumann grabbed a metal barricade and shoved it into a line of officers.

“After striking officers with the barricade and also with his fist, Neumann, now joined by others, broke down the barricades. He then used the barricade as a battering ram, rushing toward the officers,” the indictment alleges.

Throughout the afternoon of Jan. 6, according to the indictment, Neumann allegedly assaulted three officers from the Metropolitan Police Department and one from the Capitol Police. He’d been charged with attacking just one officer in the original complaint; the indictment adds new charges.

Neumann was followed to San Francisco International Airport on February 16 by FBI agents. Questioned at the international terminal, he admitted to flying to Washington, D.C., on January 5 and returning two days later.

Neumann also admitted that he interacted with law enforcement in Washington, D.C., according to the complaint, “but declined to elaborate further or to answer if he had any physical engagement with law enforcement.” Neumann also declined to answer if he entered any federal buildings during his trip. He was not arrested.

Approximately 140 police officers were assaulted on Jan. 6 at the Capitol, as supporters of then-President Donald Trump attempted to disrupt the certification of the November election he lost.

Neumann’s alleged actions in Washington, D.C., were not his first brush with law enforcement.

In October 2017, about a week after the Tubbs fire destroyed his parents’ Fountaingrove home, Neumann and a relative were arrested when they crossed a National Guard barricade restricting access to damaged or destroyed properties.

Neumann told The Press Democrat that he had hoped to go to his family’s Lyon Court house to look for valuables.

After Neumann’s father died in 2011, he left the Fountaingrove house, which had been purchased in the 1990s, to Neumann’s mother.

Interviewed by The Press Democrat in January 2018, Evan Neumann said he was misled by an earlier conversation with law enforcement into thinking what he wanted to do was OK.

“I feel like it's unfair,” he said at the time. “I feel like I was suckered.”

After initially vowing to act as his own lawyer, and take the matter to trial – as he’d successfully done in the early 1990s, when charged with scaling the Golden Gate Bridge – Neumann pleaded no contest to illegally entering a disaster zone, a misdemeanor, as part of a plea bargain with prosecutors that resulted in him serving two years probation and 40 hours of community service.

Ten years before that incident, Santa Rosa police seized 179 marijuana plants and 1 pound of processed marijuana packaged for sale at Neumann’s Railroad Square-area home. After explaining that the weed was for medicinal use to treat his bipolar condition, Neumann was eventually convicted of one count of illegal marijuana possession. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and three years probation.

Nashelly Chavez contributed to this report.

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.