(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) New video from an independent journalist shows that Ashli Babbitt, a 14-year Air Force Veteran who was murdered at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, may have tried to calm down rioters and convince the Capitol Police to control the situation, The Epoch Times reported.
Independent journalist Tayler Hansen recorded a video that shows Babbitt pleading with officers and rioters, as the latter tried to break into the Speaker’s Lobby and the former merely stood there, seemingly uninterested in stopping the chaos.
Babbitt interposed herself between a Capitol Police officer and rioter Zachary Alam, who the FBI arrested on Jan. 30, 2021.
Babbitt spoke to Alam, but he ignored her, stepped away, and punched a window next to the officer’s head. The officer flinched but otherwise did not respond—an odd reaction for an officer whose duty should be to stop vandalism and a fist flying inches from his face.
“Call [expletive] help!” Babbitt shouted, jumping up and down in front of the officers. “We’re allowed to be here!”
“Chill out! Chill the [expletive] out, bro!” someone shouted after Alam hit the window. “Hey! Chill out!”
“These guys work for us!” another crowd member interjected.
“You gonna shoot him?” another person asked.
“Mother [expletive]! We don’t want to hurt nobody,” said a bearded man with a red Trump hat, who’s standing in the forefront of the video. “We just want to go in the House.”
The officers ignored Babbitt’s pleas.
“You’re a fraud!” she shouted. “You’re a [expletive] fraud! You’re wrong!”
“Take it down!,” she screamed.
Hansen, who shot the video, said she believes that Babbitt wanted the situation to calm down.
“You could tell that she was definitely getting upset,” Hansen said while reviewing the video with The Epoch Times. “She was calm when she first got there. Then as the destruction continued and as more people started to fill in and it got more dangerous, that’s when you can tell she was getting really upset.”
Her husband, Aaron, agreed with Hansen’s interpretation.
“I believe she saw their inaction as odd or off, and was ultimately confused as to what was happening,” Aaron Babbitt told The Epoch Times. “She was a take-charge kind of person. Her frustrations show that the cops who should’ve been taking charge—weren’t.”
