berchman wrote:
"I do remember warning the people that there was a gun and yelling that pretty loud," said the 26-year-old Sullivan. "I witnessed other people be very -- they were very angry because nobody thought she should have got shot. She didn't have a weapon. I mean, she was breaking in but there was no reason for them to shoot her because there were several people breaking in and she just happened to be the person to climb through first. So, it's not like she was making violent threats or had a gun…. I mean, so that being said, I think they, they could have not k**led her."
Sullivan, who was inside the Capitol on Wednesday for quite a while, encountered a group of police officers before the shooting.
"When we made our way to that door -- and this is what you don't see in the video because you see from the moment the gun sticks out to when she gets shot -- we go to the door and, like, there's four officers there, and one officer is crying," Sullivan recalled, adding, "He's saying, 'Hey, like, I want to go home to my kids.' He's, like, looking at other officers saying this, and I'm like, 'Wow.' I don't think I've ever seen that out of a police officer."
It wasn't Sullivan's first encounter with officers inside the Capitol.
"I had talked to these other officers prior, and I saw that fear in their eyes," Sullivan said. "It's indescribable, the fear, of hopelessness and despair when there's 10 officers at the end of a corridor and there's thousands of protesters … and there's nothing that they can do other than k**l them. They either shoot them or back down."
"I do remember warning the people that there ... (
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As a former policeman, trained in r**t tactics, you always can back down. I did not see a huge physical threat to the officers, in the manner of r****rs with guns drawn and firing at the officers. Do not mistake, I do not condone what the r****rs did. But, any officer who stands on a barrier line and cries that he wants to go home needs another line of work. I was in harms way many times, maybe hundreds, and in the moment the mission was all that counted. Just like a soldier on the front lines. The mission is what counts. And a tactical retreat is always possible. It seemed to me that the r****rs were more interested in entering space, not injuring officers. The elected politicians were already whisked out, even AOC who hid in another building, so the physical building does not have the same weight to defend as the people. All in all, a very sad day for America, but it does not change the fact that the officer k**led an unarmed civilian who was posing no immediate threat to anyone.