Sandra Garza.Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
The longtime partner of late Capitol Police officerBrian Sicknick, who died after responding to the Jan 6 riots, lambasted former PresidentDonald Trumpfor his recent defense of the rioters, calling it “despicable.”
In the statement released Thursday, Trump had said: “Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election … JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL!”
Garza continued: “Those people made a choice to be there. Some of those people made a choice to engage in sadistic violence and hurt officers brutally – so much so that some of these officers will be impacted for the rest of their lives with traumatic brain injuries, other physical injuries … For [Trump] to say that his hearts and minds — or, our hearts and minds are with these people — this violent mob — is just despicable. It’s despicable. Where was his heart and mind when my partner, Brian Sicknick, was dead?”
Garza added that she has not heard from the former president since her husband died after the rioting — which was a factor in his death, officials have said.
Officer Brian D. Sicknick.USCP
Sicknick was among the officers who responded to the breach of the Capitol in January, which occurred after thousands of Trump supporters gathered to hear the former president deliver an angry speech outside the White House, amid his baseless claims that election fraud resulted in his 2020 loss to now-PresidentJoe Biden.
Sicknick, 42, died at 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 7, Capitol Police said in astatementat the time.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in April determined that his cause of death was “acute brainstem and cerebellar infarcts due to acute basilar artery thrombosis,” and ruled that his manner of death was “natural.”
During his speech the day of the riots, Trump told his supporters to “march” and “fight like hell” as Congress was meeting to certify the votes of the Electoral College inside the building.
A mob of Trump supporters did storm the Capitol, breaching security barriers, overtaking law enforcement (some of whom were severely beaten) and forcing the evacuations of lawmakers including Trump’s own vice president.
Five people, including Sicknick, died.
U.S. Capitol building breached.Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty
Garza — along with Sicknick’s mom, Gladys — were seen on Capitol Hill in May, requesting meetings with every Republican senator to urge them to vote in favor of a commission to investigate what led to the Capitol attack.
Ina statementsent to lawmakers at the time, Gladys argued that not looking into it would be “a slap in the faces of all the officers who did their jobs that day.”
Though lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were quick to slam the January riot in its immediate aftermath, some have since downplayed the significance of the insurrection. Others, like Trump, have defended those who stormed the building in a violent scene.
Last weekend, a far-right rally billed asa protest of the criminal casesof those who stormed the building in January was held on the west lawn of the Capitol.
In stirring testimony delivered on day during a July House Committee hearing on the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, a group of the officers on guard that day detailed their experiences, calling on lawmakers to further investigate what led to the deadly events.
Capitol Police Sgt. Harry Dunn argued that both the rioters and those who sent them should be punished, saying, “If a hitman is hired and he kills somebody, the hitman goes to jail. But not only does the hitman go to jail, but the person who hired them does.”
Dunn continued: “There was an attack carried out on Jan. 6th and a hitman sent them. I want you to get to the bottom of that.”
source: people.com
