Who is Caroline Edwards and why did she testify in the Jan. 6 hearings?
Edwards was on duty at the Capitol on Jan. 6 when pro-Trump rioters attacked the Capitol as Congress was in the process of certifying electoral college votes in the 2020 presidential election.
Edwards detailed her injuries for the committee, and the work she did despite those injuries to protect parts of the Capitol from rioters.
"What I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I had seen out of the movies. I couldn't believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground. You know, they were bleeding. They were throwing up," Edwards said. .
"I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people's blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos. I can't, I can't even describe what I saw."
Edwards was a four-year veteran of the U.S. Capitol Police when the Jan. 6 attack took place, according to USA Today. However, she told the committee nothing in her training would have prepared her for the events of that day.
"Never in my wildest dreams did I think that as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer, I would find myself in the middle of a battle. You know, I'm trained to detain, you know, a couple of subjects and handle a crowd. But I'm not combat trained," she said.
"And that day it was just hours of hand-to-hand combat, hours of dealing with things that were way beyond any law enforcement officer has ever trained for."
Edwards was present at the Capitol steps when members of who she identified at Thursday's hearing as the Arizona Proud Boys and one of their leaders, Joseph Biggs, began to approach the building.
Edwards said Biggs began to shout at her, "turning the tables on us" something she identified because she had worked hundreds of "civil disturbance events."
"I know when I'm being turned into a villain. That is when I turn to my sergeant and I stated the understatement of the century. I said 'Serg., I think we are going to need a few more people down here,'" she said.
Edwards said Biggs and the other Proud Boys began to confer amongst themselves, approached a police barricade made of bike racks, before charging ahead.
She testified on June 9 about how she worked to keep the Proud Boys contained next to the bike racks. Though she knew she did not have the strength to stop them, she hoped to delay them long enough for more police to arrive for back up. As the barricade was forced forward, she fell backward and was knocked unconscious.
Edwards was the first law enforcement officer injured by rioters who attacked the Capitol, leaving her with a brain injury, according to a statement issued by the Jan. 6 Committee. Though injured, she continued to patrol the Capitol and prevented more rioters from entering the building.
Edwards has already made official statements on what happened to her on the day, including in court documents filed in the case of one of the Jan. 6 rioters who allegedly attacked her.
