US born Lankan's law enforcement agency in the thick of Capitol riot

As rioters stormed the Capitol Building in Washington DC last week, there was an American of Sri Lankan ancestry who headed an emergency response unit of a US law enforcement agency battling thousands of demonstrators in an unprecedented attack in which five were killed.

Ahead of the rally, Ashan Benedict, the special agent in charge of the Washington field office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), put a rapid-response unit based an hour away in suburban Virginia on standby. He told senior Justice Department officials that an arson and explosives task force stood at the ready, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

“The question mark for everybody was what happens when the speeches are over? Do they just leave to go home? Do they want to move around the city? Do they want to go to the White House? It was hard to say,” said Benedict. “Ultimately, they went to the Capitol.”

Alerted by Capitol Police, ATF agents went to check out reports of potential explosive devices near Republican National Committee headquarters—the first of several types of explosives found in the area that day.

Just blocks from the Capitol, Benedict said he heard chanting and yelling. “I was standing there while it was escalating,” he said, adding that as he spoke to a Capitol Police captain, the officer’s radio crackled with urgent reports that “the Capitol complex was under duress.”

Five minutes later, Capitol Police formally requested assistance from the ATF and other federal law-enforcement agencies in clearing and securing the building. FBI tactical units, which had earlier been positioned nearby, arrived within minutes.

Ashan is the US- born son of Sri Lankan parents -- Chitra and the late Edward Benedict, who was a Lecturer at Fordham University, New York.