Mr. Khater and Mr. Tanios have been seen on video early within the afternoon standing 5 to eight ft away from law enforcement officials, together w
Mr. Khater and Mr. Tanios have been seen on video early within the afternoon standing 5 to eight ft away from law enforcement officials, together with Officer Sicknick, the F.B.I. mentioned.
In a video of the assault, Mr. Khater mentioned, “Give me that,” after which reached into Mr. Tanios’s backpack, the F.B.I. mentioned. Mr. Tanios protested that it was too early, apparently to assault the officers with the spray. Mr. Khater countered that he had simply been sprayed and held up the can of chemical spray.
At 2:23 p.m., as different rioters started to drag away a barrier between them and the Capitol, Mr. Khater aimed his spray can towards officers, the F.B.I. mentioned, citing video footage together with a physique digicam worn by an officer from Washington’s Metropolitan Police Division. The officers reacted “one after the other, to one thing placing them within the face,” the F.B.I. mentioned. “The officers instantly retreat from the road, deliver their fingers to their faces and rush to seek out water to clean out their eyes.”
They have been unable to defend the Capitol for at the least 20 minutes whereas they recovered, video confirmed, in accordance with the F.B.I. Two different officers who have been assaulted “described the spray to their face as a substance as robust as, if not stronger than, any model of pepper spray they’d been uncovered to throughout their coaching as legislation enforcement officers,” the F.B.I. mentioned, and one mentioned she had scabs on her face for weeks.
Officer Sicknick was later rushed to a hospital, the place he died. Investigators opened a murder investigation instantly after the demise of the officer, a 42-year-old Air Nationwide Guard veteran who served in Saudi Arabia and Kyrgyzstan.
Each officers and rioters deployed spray, mace and different irritants in the course of the assault. On condition that proof, prosecutors introduced assault costs fairly than a homicide cost, legislation enforcement officers mentioned, talking on the situation of anonymity to debate a unbroken investigation.
It stays unclear whether or not Officer Sicknick died due to his publicity to the spray. On Jan. 7, the day that he died, the Capitol Police mentioned in a press release that he “was injured whereas bodily participating with protesters” on the riot after which “returned to his division workplace and collapsed.”