‘This is how I’m going to die’: Officers tell Jan. 6 stories
WASHINGTON >> “This is how I’m going to die, defending this entrance,” Capitol Police Officer Aquilino Gonell recalled thinking, testifying at the emotional opening hearing of the congressional panel investigating the violent Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
Gonell told House investigators he could feel himself losing oxygen as he was crushed by supporters of then-President Donald
Trump as he tried to hold them back and protect the Capitol and lawmakers.
He and three other officers gave their accounts of the attack Tuesday, sometimes wiping away tears, sometimes angrily rebuking Republicans who have resisted the probe and embraced Trump’s downplaying the day’s violence by supporters who were challenging his election defeat.
Along with graphic video of hand-to-hand fighting, the officers described being beaten as they held off the mob that broke through windows and doors and interrupted the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential win. The new committee is launching its probe with a focus on the law-enforcement officers who protected them, putting a human face on the violence of the day.
Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who rushed to the scene, told the committee and millions watching news coverage that he was “grabbed, beaten, tased, all while being called a traitor to my country.”
Doctors later told him he had had a heart attack.
Daniel Hodges, also a D.C. police officer, said he remembered foaming at the mouth and screaming for help as rioters crushed him between two doors and bashed him in the head with his own weapon, injuring his skull.
Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn said one group of rioters, perhaps 20 people, screamed a racial epithet at him as he was trying to keep them from breaching the House chamber.
Tensions on Capitol Hill have worsened since the insurrection, with many Republicans playing down, or denying, the violence that occurred, and denouncing the Democratic-led investigation as politically motivated. Democrats are reminding people how brutal it was, and how the lawenforcement officers who were sworn to protect the Capitol suffered serious injuries at the hands of the rioters.
The officers detailed the horror of their experiences, their injuries and the lasting trauma, as they begged the lawmakers to investigate the attack.
“I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them and the people in this room,” Fanone testified.
Pounding his fist on the table in front of him, he said, “Too many are now telling me that hell doesn’t exist or that hell actually wasn’t that bad. The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful.”