A retired Chester, Pennsylvania firefighter who threw a fire extinguisher at police during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol is now suing the Ohio federal prison where he served part of his sentence, accusing medical staff there of ignoring his worsening health problems for months before he was ultimately diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Robert Sanford says he arrived at the prison physically fine, only to develop worsening back pain in early 2024 that went untreated despite repeated pleas for help.
The lawsuit, filed jointly with his wife April Sanford, was initially lodged in federal court in Philadelphia before being transferred to Cleveland this week, according to Cleveland.com. Court records reviewed by PacerMonitor show the complaint names the United States, FCI Elkton and prison medical personnel as defendants, seeking damages for alleged negligence and civil rights violations. Sanford claims prison doctors did not see him for four days despite his pleas for help, and that a doctor later prescribed him a steroid in May 2024 that failed to ease his pain.
A Diagnosis Delayed for Months
By July 2024, Sanford reported his pain was so severe he struggled to walk. A doctor prescribed steroids after he returned to the facility in a wheelchair, but the treatment did not help. At one point, according to the lawsuit, a doctor accused Sanford of being a malingerer — suggesting he was faking his symptoms.
An Aug. 1, 2024 X-ray led to a diagnosis of hip arthritis and hip impingement syndrome, but Sanford's condition worsened further the very next day when he fell while using a walker. He was eventually sent to a nearby hospital, where doctors found he had a badly fractured hip, serious blood clots, and lung cancer. A court filing redacted the full details of Sanford's medical condition, but the sequence of findings — fracture, clots and cancer discovered in rapid succession — forms the core of his negligence claim.
The Bureau of Prisons eventually cited Sanford's terminal medical condition in asking a judge to release him roughly 19 months early. A judge approved that request, and Sanford was released from prison in October 2024. Notably, prison officials had at one point placed Sanford in solitary confinement and, according to the suit, replaced his wheelchair with a cane during his decline.
From the Capitol Riot to a Federal Cell
Sanford, who served 26 years with the Chester Fire Department before retiring in March 2020, was turned in to federal authorities six days after the Jan. 6 attack by a close friend who recognized him in social media photos wearing a knit cap bearing the initials CFD, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Investigators had initially chased false leads suggesting the initials stood for the Chicago Fire Department before the tip led them to Sanford in Pennsylvania. He was among roughly 75 Pennsylvania residents charged in connection with the riot, making the state one of the top origins for Capitol attack defendants, per the same report.
Sanford had traveled to Washington, D.C. aboard a bus organized through Turning Point USA or its affiliate Turning Point Action, which advertised sending more than 80 buses of Trump supporters to the rally, as reported by Business Insider. Defense filings noted he rode with roughly 50 other passengers on the sponsored bus. Once at the Capitol, Sanford threw a fire extinguisher that struck two police officers and called the officers defending the building traitors — though those same officers reportedly later expressed compassion for his situation.
Sentencing, Restitution and a Presidential Pardon
In April 2023, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman sentenced Sanford to four years and four months in prison — 52 months — and ordered him to pay $3,798 in restitution to cover medical expenses for an injured officer, plus $2,000 to the Architect of the Capitol for property damage, according to Firehouse. Prosecutors said one officer struck by the extinguisher suffered head swelling, while another required hospital evaluation for head pain.
Before sentencing, Sanford's attorney said he had voluntarily begun anti-cult counseling to examine how political mob mentality influenced his actions and to work with a cult deprogramming specialist confronting false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, according to the LA Times. Defense attorneys submitted documentation of those sessions to argue for a reduced sentence. Sanford's case is now part of a broader chapter of Jan. 6 prosecutions, after President Donald Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people for crimes committed during the attack.
A Prison With a History of Medical Scrutiny
FCI Elkton, located in Lisbon, Ohio, is a low-security federal facility housing roughly 2,000 male inmates and operating specialized units including a Sex Offender Management Program and a Residential Drug Abuse Program, according to Prisonpedia. The facility was previously the target of a 2020 federal class-action habeas lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Ohio over inadequate medical responses and crowded conditions during a COVID-19 outbreak that infected hundreds of prisoners and killed nine inmates, per the ACLU. A district judge initially ordered the release or transfer of medically vulnerable prisoners, though the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later vacated that order.
Sanford's suit relies on the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows federal prisoners to sue the U.S. government for injuries caused by the negligence of Bureau of Prisons medical staff, provided they first exhaust internal administrative remedies, according to the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. That hurdle is a steep one: a 2026 study of a decade of Bureau of Prisons data found that 98% of formal medical grievances filed by federal inmates were rejected by prison administrators, with less than 1% resulting in granted relief, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.
The Bureau of Prisons has said it does not comment on pending litigation. The case remains before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, where Sanford and his wife are seeking damages tied to what they describe as months of ignored medical warnings inside the Lisbon facility.
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