(File Photo of a Gavel)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Beaver County, PA) The father of a 10-year-old boy whose mother has been missing from the area of Washington D.C. for almost two weeks was in court yesterday afternoon after police arrested him in Brighton Township on a parole violation Saturday morning. 

Russell Ashford was supposed to have a hearing so he could be transported back to the D.C. area, but Pennsylvania State Police filed charges against him for illegal gun possession just 30 minutes before the hearing started.

Ashford is the father of a 10-year-old boy, whose mother, Antoinette Forbes, has been missing since September 4th.

Ashford was convicted in 2021 for assaulting Forbes because he punched her more than a dozen times. 

He was arrested on Saturday in Brighton Township for violating parole on that case and he is in the Beaver County Jail.

According to Beaver County District Attorney Nate Bible, license plate readers tracked him from Washington, D.C. back to Western Pennsylvania. 

Police stated that a woman who was his girlfriend, said that in June of 2025, Ashford was moving out of his apartment at Bridgewater Crossing and was going to Washington, D.C.

She confirmed that Ashford brought guns to her home and she didn’t think anything of it, because Ashford told her that he was retired from either the FBI or the CIA.

Police took seven of the guns of Ashford from that woman’s home and they were two pistols, two shotguns and three rifles.

This case now has to be tried in Beaver County before Ashford can be transported to the area of Washington D.C. on the probation violation charge.

Ashford has not been charged in the disappearance of Forbes.

Ashford is scheduled to go back to court for a preliminary hearing on September 28th on the gun charges.