WASHINGTON – Four people who died during a siege of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday have been identified by the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington D.C.
One woman, identified as 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt, died of a gunshot wound, police said. Media reports have said she was an Air Force veteran and avid supporter of President Donald Trump.
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A U.S. Capitol Police officer shot Babbitt as rioters broke into the U.S. Capitol on the day Congress met to confirm Joe Biden as the presidential election winner. Babbitt later died at a hospital.
Police said 34-year-old Rosanne Boyland of Kennesaw, Georgia, 55-year-old Kevin Greeson of Athens, Alabama, and 50-year-old Benjamin Phillips of Ringtown, Pennsylvania also died on Wednesday.
They died of medical emergencies, police said, but did not detail the causes of death.
The chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, Steven Sund, said the officer who shot Babbitt will be placed under administrative leave pending an investigation.
He said rioters “actively attacked” Capitol police and other law enforcement officers with metal pipes, discharged chemical irritants and “took up other weapons against our officers.” The scene was “unlike any I have ever experienced in my 30 years in law enforcement here in Washington, D.C.,” Sund said in a statement.
Ashli Babbitt’s husband, Aaron Babbitt, told KSWB-TV, a Fox affiliate in San Diego, that he and his wife, 35, live in San Diego and that she was in Washington on Wednesday to support Trump. Aaron Babbitt sent his wife a message about 30 minutes before the shooting and never heard back.
“She loved her country and she was doing what she thought was right to support her country, joining up with like-minded people that also love their president and their country,” he told the news station.
Congress confirmed Democrat Joe Biden as the presidential election winner before dawn Thursday. Trump, who had repeatedly refused to concede the election, said in a statement immediately after the vote that there will be a smooth transition of power on Inauguration Day.
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