Officer Aquilino Gonell of the U.S. Capitol Police testified Tuesday that what officers experienced on January 6 was like “a medieval battle”
Photo: Jim Bourg/UPI/Shutterstock The House Select Committee investigating the events of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol held its first hearing Tuesday morning, featuring vivid and, at times, emotional testimony from four law-enforcement officers who fought back rioters and sought to defend the building.
Gonell wiped away tears at times, especially when he recalled returning home after the riot and refusing a hug from his wife because his uniform was still covered in chemicals that rioters deployed against the officers. “I heard chanting from some in the crowd ‘Get his gun’ and ‘Kill him with his own gun.’ I was aware enough to recognize I was at risk of being stripped of and killed with my own firearm. I was electrocuted again and again and again with a taser. I’m sure I was screaming, but I don’t think I could even hear my own voice,” Fanone said.
“On my left was a man with a clear riot shield stolen during the assault. He slammed it against and, with the weight of all the bodies pushing behind him, trapped me. My arms were pinned and effectively useless, trapped against either the shield on my left or the doorframe on my right,” Hodges said. Officer Harry Dunn of the U.S. Capitol Police, the final witness of the day, began by asking for a moment of silence in honor of Brian Sicknick, a fellow Capitol police officer who died after sustaining injuries on January 6.
Dunn described encountering rioters inside who refused to leave the building and said that Trump invited them, that Joe Biden wasn’t the president and that no one voted for him. When Dunn, who is black, told them that he had voted for Biden, he said the rioters began to hurl racial slurs at him.