‘I Was Slipping in People’s Blood’: Capitol Officer Describes Jan. 6 Horrors

One of the first U.S. Capitol Police officers who was injured during the Jan. 6 insurrection gave brutal testimony of her experience Thursday night, describing her traumatic head injury—and the horrors she witnessed in the subsequent hours.

Officer Caroline Edwards told the House Jan. 6 Select Committee that she was injured as members of the violent right-wing Proud Boys gang began their assault on the Capitol, knocking her over with a bike rack that moments before had served as the initial police line.

“I felt the bike rack come on top of my head and I was pushed backwards, and my foot caught the stair behind me. And my chin hit the handrail. At that point I blacked out, but the back of my head clipped the concrete stairs behind me,” she testified.

The committee showed the video of that attack, shot by documentary filmmaker Nick Quested.

Edwards lost consciousness, but when she came to she returned to her work, helping other officers who’d been attacked wash pepper spray out of their eyes. 

Later, she was injured again. 

Edwards testified that she fought to help hold the line nearer to the Capitol building, and watched as Officer Brian Sicknick stumbled back holding his face after being sprayed with something by a rioter.

“He turned just about as pale as this sheet of paper,” she said, holding up a folded white document.

Edwards went to help Sicknick—who died of a stroke on the day after the riot—and was then sprayed with a substance herself. As another officer tried to help them retreat, they were teargassed.

But when asked what moment stood out the most to her that day, Edwards didn’t mention one of the assaults she withstood. She said it was the shock she experienced when she first was able to see the “war zone” that the Capitol had become.

“I can just remember my breath catching in my throat, because what I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I'd seen out of the movies. I couldn't believe my eyes,” she said, speaking slowly and emotionally.

“There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up. I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people's blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos,” she continued. “I never in my wildest dreams did I think that as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer, I would find myself in the middle of a battle.”

Edwards pointed out that police officers aren’t trained for this level of sustained violence.

“I'm not combat trained. And that day, it was just hours of hand-to-hand combat, hours of dealing with things that were way beyond [what] any law enforcement officer has ever trained for,” she said.

More than 140 officers were injured during the Jan. 6 insurrection.