A U.S. Capitol Police officer pays his respects to colleague Brian Sicknick, who died on January 7 of the injuries sustained while protecting the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 attack on the building while in the rotunda in honor of the US Capitol is located in Washington, USA, February 2, 2021.
Leah Millis | Reuters
The cause of death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was further investigated Wednesday. Even one official disclosed the cause of death of four other people who died as a direct result of the Capitol uprising on Jan. 6 by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
Capitol police said Sicknick was injured during the riot “while physically fighting protesters”.
The violence began after then-President Trump and his prominent supporters urged participants in a rally outside the White House to oppose the confirmation of then-President Joe Biden’s election victory through a joint congressional session.
Sicknick died the day after the riot that saw hundreds of Trump supporters rampaging through the halls of Congress fighting with the police.
Two men, Julian Elie Khater of State College in Pennsylvania and George Pierre Tanios of Morgantown, West Virginia, were arrested in March for assaulting Sicknick and two other police officers with a bear spray-type chemical.
But none of the men are accused of killing Sicknick.
One of the four Trump supporters, Ashli Babbitt, who died during the uprising, was known to have been fatally shot by a police officer guarding the House of Representatives when Babbitt and others entered that room on the day of the uprising went.
Babbitt, 35, was shot in her left shoulder, according to Washington’s chief medical officer, who said her death was murder on Wednesday.
No one has been criminally charged with shooting Babbitt, an Air Force veteran who most recently ran a pool supply company near San Diego.
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Another Trump supporter, Roseanne Boyland of Kennesaw, Georgia, died in an accident of “acute amphetamine poisoning,” the ME said Wednesday.
Boyland, 34, was previously known to have been a drug abuser, but her family said she sobered for several years only to fall under the sway of the unsubstantiated QAnon conspiracy theory, whose supporters fervently support Trump.
Justin Winchell, a friend of Boyland’s who was with her during the riot, told a CBS partner in Atlanta in January that she was trampled by a large crowd when Trump supporters pushed against the police who ran the Capitol guarded.
Rioters clash with police on January 6, 2021, who are trying to break into the Capitol through the front doors.
Lev Radin | Pacific Press | LightRocket | Getty Images
Boyland’s brother-in-law Justin Cave told Atlanta media: “I’ve never tried to be a political person, but personally I believe the president’s words sparked a riot that killed four of his biggest fans last night and I think we should be referring to the 25th amendment at this point. “
The 25th amendment allows the vice-president and a majority of cabinet members to revoke the powers of a president if the president is declared unfit.
The deaths of the other two Trump supporters during the uprising – 55-year-old Kevin Greeson and 50-year-old Benjamin Phillips – were deemed natural. Both were the result of hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, the ME said.
Greeson, an Athens, Alabama resident who previously supported President Barack Obama, appeared to have suffered a heart attack and was seen by reporters undergoing chest compressions from EMTs.
The New York Times reported that Greeson, who had worked at a Goodyear facility, was on the phone with his wife on the west side of the Capitol complex when he fell on a sidewalk.
The Alabama Political Reporter’s news site noted that Greeson was active on Parler, the Conservative-favored social media platform, where he commented on a post on Dec. 29, “about the possibility that President Donald Trump is calling on militias for Washington DC to step in and come together. ” ::
“I’m in … call me, I have guns and ammunition!” wrote Greeson, who in another Parler post showed a photo of him holding two assault rifles with two pistols in his belt.
Philips, a computer programmer who lived in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, organized a bus full of Trump supporters that drove to Washington on Jan. 6 to hear Trump speak.
Philips told the Philadelphia Inquirer ahead of the trip that he wanted to see what Trump would do.
“It seems like he called us there for a reason. I think something big is going to happen that no one is talking about yet,” he told the newspaper. “I think he has an ace up his sleeve.”
As he drove a van behind the bus to Washington, Philips said to The Inquirer, “To be honest, it seems like the first day of the rest of our lives.”
“You should call Zero this year because something is going to happen.”
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