Officers’ tears as they revisit horror of ‘coup’
CAPITOL Police Officer Caroline Edwards described the ‘war scene’ that she and other officers faced when rioters attacked them on January 6.
Testifying before the inquiry, Officer Edwards told how she slipped in her colleagues’ blood as she fought against the hordes attempting to enter the building through doors and windows.
She shocked the committee with her testimony about the bloody scenes outside the Capitol and the traumatic brain injury she suffered when members of the far-Right group Proud Boys and others pushed her to the ground. She endured ‘hours of hand to hand combat’, and was called a ‘traitor to my country’ by rioters. She described how she blacked out after falling and hitting her head. Officer Edwards said she had tried to fight off members of the Proud Boys using a bike rack.
She said her colleague, Brian Sicknick, looked ‘ghostly pale’ after being sprayed with a substance by a rioter. He died in the aftermath of the attack, a death attributed to a stroke.
She added: ‘It was carnage. Never did I think as a police officer I would find myself in the middle of a battle.’ Among those who wept during the hearing was officer Harry Dunn, who was on duty that day. Also there was Serena Liebengood, the wife of one of three officers who committed suicide after the riots.