Quickly after rioters breached the preliminary police strains on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards blacked out, the again of her head clipping the concrete stairs.
Edwards, testifying Thursday in the course of the Jan. 6 committee’s first public listening to, stated she regained consciousness in the course of a “battle scene.”
“Once I fell behind that line and I noticed, I can simply keep in mind my breath catching in my throat, as a result of what I noticed was only a battle scene,” she stated. “It was one thing like I had seen out of the films. I couldn’t consider my eyes. There have been officers on the bottom. They had been bleeding, they had been throwing up. I imply, I noticed associates with blood throughout their faces. I used to be slipping in individuals’s blood.”
Edwards, who was among the many first cops to endure accidents after a mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters descended on the Capitol, delivered a few of the most gripping testimony in the course of the Jan. 6 Committee’s preliminary listening to Thursday — one which featured by no means earlier than seen footage of the violence in addition to snippets of newly launched testimony from former Trump White Home officers, allies and the rioters themselves.
Edwards was one in all two witnesses who appeared to provide testimony earlier than the panel in particular person Thursday night.
“I used to be catching individuals as they fell,” she stated. “It was carnage, it was chaos. I can’t even describe what I noticed. By no means in my wildest goals did I feel that, as a police officer, as a regulation enforcement officer, I might discover myself in the course of a battle.”
Edwards stated she was “skilled to detain a few topics and deal with a crowd, however I’m not fight skilled.”
“And that day, it was simply hours of hand-to-hand fight,” she continued. “Hours of coping with issues that had been approach past any any regulation enforcement officer has ever skilled for. And I simply keep in mind that second of stepping behind the road and simply seeing absolutely the battle zone that the west entrance had turn out to be.”
Edwards, who suffered a concussion, additionally recalled seeing fellow Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died days later of a stroke, overlaying his face and searching pale as a sheet of paper after having been sprayed with a chemical. This was regarding to her as a result of she knew being hit with tear fuel makes an individual’s face flip crimson, not “ghostly pale.” As she was attempting to assist him, she too was sprayed within the ongoing melee, she stated.
In her introduction to the committee, Edwards stated she confronted intense verbal abuse in the course of the riot and within the days that adopted as nicely.
“I used to be referred to as [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi’s canine, referred to as incompetent, referred to as a hero and a villain,” she stated. “I used to be referred to as a traitor to my nation, my oath, and my structure. In fact, I used to be none of these issues. I used to be an American standing head to head with different People asking myself what number of instances, many, many instances how we had gotten right here. I had been referred to as names earlier than, however by no means had my patriotism or obligation been referred to as into query.”
“They dared to query my honor, they dared to query my loyalty and so they dared to query my obligation,” she added. “I’m a proud American and I’ll gladly sacrifice the whole lot to guarantee that the America my grandfather defended is right here for a few years to come back.”
