WASHINGTON — A Florida man accused of assaulting police with a PVC pipe on Jan. 6 died has died while awaiting trial, according to a filing in federal court Tuesday.
David Kennedy Homol, 55, of Umatilla, Florida, was charged in January with multiple felony counts of obstruction of an official proceeding, civil disorder and assaulting, resisting or impeding police. Following his arrest, Homol was released on personal recognizance under standard conditions.
Homol was next scheduled to appear before a magistrate judge in D.C. on May 21. However, on Tuesday, federal prosecutors filed a motion for abatement of prosecution saying they had received a police report confirming Homol had died on April 18. Prosecutors said Homol’s attorney, Stephen Sulzer, confirmed his death. Sulzer did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment. A cause of death for Homol was not listed.
Homol’s younger half-brother, Dillon Homol, was acquitted of a felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding following a bench trial before Magistrate Judge Jia M. Cobb last year but convicted of four other misdemeanor counts for unlawfully entering the U.S. Capitol during the riot. U.S. Cobb sentenced him in January to two years of probation.
According to charging documents, investigators became aware of David Homol’s alleged acts at the Capitol while preparing for Dillon Homol’s trial. The younger Homol had been preparing to call his older half-brother as a witness in his case when investigators discovered video showing the two of them walking to the Capitol together. Photos included in the statement of facts show the elder Homol wearing a red backpack, a red, white and blue scarf and carrying an American flag secured to a PVC pipe.
Investigators say public-source video shows the Homols making their way to the west front of the Capitol, where at some point the elder Homol puts on a black helmet and pulls his scarf up over his face. During a melee between police and rioters around 2:12 p.m. – approximately a minute before the first breach of the building – investigators say the elder Homol can be seen swinging the PVC pipe flagpole multiple times at police officers. In one image included in charging documents, a man identified as Homol can be seen swinging a PVC pipe down on an officer’s back as they are bent over. Another image appears to show an officer attempting to wrest the pipe away from Homol’s grasp.
Later in the day, investigators say Homol sent his younger half-brother a text reading, “Today was not an antifa-inspired statement. It was totally done by angry Trump supporters with no firearms, many singing GOD bless America, Jesus saves, etc.”
Homol is not the first Jan. 6 defendant to die while still facing charges related to the riot. In September 2021, another Florida defendant, John Steven Anderson, 61, of St. Augustine, died while awaiting trial on similar counts of civil disorder and assaulting, resisting or impeding police. In July of the same year, another defendant, Joseph Cable Barnes, of Texas, died after colliding with a vehicle while riding a motorcycle. In February 2022, Matthew Lawrence Perna, a 37-year-old man from Sharpsville, Pennsylvania, died of suicide after pleading guilty to four counts connected to the riot. Perna had been scheduled to be sentenced in April of that year.