Last Updated on March 13, 2021
During the mostly peaceful Capitol Hill protests on January 6, the only person to die of a gun shot injury was 14-year Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed woman who attended the protest unarmed and illegally entered the U.S. Capitol. Over two months after her death at the hands of a Capitol Hill police officer, no information about her death has been released by Capitol Hill Police.
Appearing on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Babbitt family attorney Terrell Roberts confirmed the family has been given no information relating to the circumstances that led to Babbitt’s death.
“We don’t know why she was shot, there’s no good reason why she was shot,” Roberts explained. “I mean, this is not a case where deadly force should have been used. All the officer had to do was step forward, establish his presence, give her a verbal warning, and if she didn’t comply and he had grounds to arrest her, arrest her. He could have arrested this 5’2, 110lb woman easily. But instead, he shot her.”
“You don’t use deadly force unless you are confronted with a threat to your life or the threat to somebody else’s life. There was no immediate threat to the officer or to anyone else. That corridor was clear of congressmen, there wasn’t even a congressman close to Ashli Babbitt,” he added. “She was not a threat, and it’s baffling why he would go ahead and shoot her first instead of taking the other steps like just merely arresting her.”
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At this point Carlson prodded the attorney, asking if he is certain that no verbal warning was given to Babbitt. Roberts noted that there are multiple different video angles showing Babbitt’s death at the hands of a Capitol Hill police officer, and none of them reveal an audible warning.
“The video, where people have taken video on Ashli’s side of the doors, there’s several people, you can’t hear a warning,” Roberts explained. “Now, he’s behind, it looks like he’s concealed himself in a room, he’s wearing a mask. She’s all the way on the other side of the room, there’s lots of noise on her side. It should be understood by the officer that someone’s not going to hear him.”
“The warning has to be audible, it has to be heard,” he noted. “So what you do is you come out, if she’s going through that window, you come out, you take a place on the middle of the corridor, you lock eyes with her, and you give her the warning there. This is something that’s standard in all police training: If feasible, you give a warning before you shoot somebody.”
Carlson then asked why Capitol Hill police still has not released a statement on the death of Babbitt, despite allegedly conducting an investigation. Babbitt remains the only person who died of a gunshot during the supposed-insurrection.
“There’s no explanation for that. We’re two months down the road, they’ve been doing an investigation, we should have some statement explaining why they needed to shoot this lady.”
