Paramilitary snowflake is nabbed in Vermont.


Daniel Banyai, owner of the controversial former Pawlet gun range and paramilitary training facility known as Slate Ridge, was charged Wednesday with aggravated assault on a protected person and resisting arrest after a traffic stop led to an altercation with a Pawlet constable, according to Vermont State Police.

Banyai is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday afternoon in Rutland Superior criminal court. He was held overnight at Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility for lack of $15,000 bail, according to a state police press release issued Wednesday night.

Banyai, 50, has had an active arrest warrant since last year after an Environmental Court judge found him in contempt of court orders to dismantle unpermitted structures on his Slate Ridge property. He was ordered to turn himself in to the Vermont Department of Corrections.

According to state police, Banyai was a passenger in a vehicle that Second Constable Tom Covino pulled over for speeding around 2:20 p.m. in Pawlet. Police said Banyai “engaged in a physical altercation” with Covino, who then used pepper spray “to gain his compliance” before arresting Banyai.

In December, an environmental court judge reissued a warrant for Banyai’s arrest after finding him in contempt.

“The threat of incarceration is the only remaining tool at the Court’s disposal to encourage compliance,” Judge Thomas Durkin wrote in his ruling, ordering Banyai to turn himself in to the Vermont Department of Corrections by Dec. 22.

In Banyai’s absence, his attorney, Robert Kaplan, argued an appeal before the Vermont Supreme Court against the arrest warrant and more than $100,000 in fines. The state’s highest court rejected that appeal earlier this month.