The defendant, Landon Copeland, will remain in prison until he faces trial, Federal Magistrate Judge Robin Meriweather decided Friday. Prosecutors say that on January 6, Copeland stole a riot shield, turned a metal fence into a weapon and pushed other rioters into a police line. He has not yet filed a petition for the four charges in that case.
Prosecutors say Copeland was only released two days after his arrest in May when he barged into a probation office in Utah.
That’s when Copeland called a probation officer and announced he was on his way because he wanted to be heard and “would die for it,” according to the officer who testified during the more than two-hour hearing on Friday.
The probation officer was wearing body armor in anticipation of Copeland’s arrival. According to the officer, Copeland took off his shirt, pressed his head against the bulletproof glass and said that if he was on the other side he would have eaten the officer because he was “starving.”
After about 15 minutes, Copeland was gone, the officer said.
“Mr. Copeland’s conduct speaks louder in the short run of his release,” Meriweather said during the hearing on Friday. Meriweather said that “it seems that mental health and substance abuse really do have a role” in Copeland’s outbreak, and expressed concern that “something like this would happen when he was on his own” and not under prison supervision. .
Once in prison, Copeland underwent a mental health evaluation and was deemed competent. Prosecutors noted that Copeland was denied mental health medication while in prison.
Copeland’s defense attorneys said the explosion was “clearly a mental health episode”, and that Copeland “doesn’t want to harm anyone.”
CNN’s Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.
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