A Texas sheriff who said participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was the “best day” of her life has been fired by the department that employed her, KSAT reports.
Bexar County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Roxanne Mathai, 47, was first placed in administrative leave in January after Facebook posts showing her at the Capitol on Jan. 6 surfaced. She was fired in June, but appealed the decision by claiming that she was simply attending a historical event and was wrongfully terminated. She also claimed that since she did not enter the Capitol, she wasn’t taking part in the riot.
But Sheriff Javier Salazar thought her excuse to be “ridiculous.”
“It’s not like you’re standing there for the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That’s a historic event,” Salazar said. “You’re there when fellow Americans lost their lives. That’s nothing to be proud of.”
Mathai’s appeal ultimately failed, and her firing was upheld. She has not been criminally charged in relation to the riot.
As KSAT points out, photos she posted to Facebook showed her walking toward the Capitol after then-President Donald Trump’s speech at the Stop the Steal rally, which took place just before the riot broke out.
“And we are going in……in the crowd at the stairs…not inside the capitol like the others,” she wrote in one post. “Not catching a case lol.”
“Not gonna lie…..aside from my kids, this was, indeed, the best day of my life. And it’s not over yet,” Mathai wrote in a separate post.
Mathai was an 8-year veteran of the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office.
