Caroline Edwards, a police officer, was injured during the January 6 riots when she tried stopping the Proud Boys from entering the US Capitol. 

As the first from the law enforcement to get injured, Edwards testified at the House Select Committee’s primetime session on Thursday. She presented a first-hand account to the panel led by US Rep Bennie Thompson. 

Edwards went on to describe the riot as a war scene. The officer added that she was pepper sprayed and ‘slipping in  people’s blood’. 

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“I can just remember my breath catching in my throat because what I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I had seen out of the movies. I couldn’t believe my eyes: 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. I can’t even describe what I saw. 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,” she said at the hearing. 

Caroline Edwards further added that there were “hours of hand-to-hand combat.”

In her opening statement, Edwards said that she was called named on the day. A bike rack fell on top of her head and she fell while trying to contain the rioters. 

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“I had blacked out. The back of my head clipped the concrete stairs behind me.”

“I was called a lot of things on January 6, 2021 and the days after. I was called Nancy Pelosi’s dog, called incompetent, called a hero and a villain. I was called a traitor to my country, my oath and my Constitution. In actuality, I was none of those things. I was an American standing face to face with other Americans, asking myself, how many times, many, many, times, how we had gotten here?” she said.