Woman dies after shooting in U.S. Capitol; D.C. National Guard activated after mob breaches building

The woman who was shot and killed during rioting in the Capitol on Wednesday was identified as 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt, a California native and Air Force veteran, said her former husband.

Timothy McEntee wrote in text messages that Babbitt, of San Diego, was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq in the Air Force, before other deployments with the National Guard to Kuwait and Qatar. McEntee and Babbitt met in the Air Force and were married for 14 years, before splitting in 2019.

“I feel absolutely terrible and sick to my stomach about it … she had a big head and a strong mind,” McEntee wrote. “She was never afraid to speak her mind and in a way this was her way of speaking her mind (going to the rally).”

Three people suffered medical emergencies and died during the Wednesday siege of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Trump, D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee III said.

The people’s names and the circumstances of their deaths were not released during the late-night news conference with Contee and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) on Wednesday.

Their deaths were in addition to the fatal shooting of a woman by a Capitol Police officer.

Also at the news conference, Bowser (D) declared a public emergency in the city until Jan. 21, to “extend and security through the inauguration,” which gives her more authority to draw on resources to maintain city security. Inauguration Day is Jan. 20.

Virginia state Sen. Amanda F. Chase (R-Chesterfield), a Trump-style populist who is seeking her party’s gubernatorial nomination, attended the pro-Trump rally but left before the crowd stormed the Capitol.

In a Facebook video posted Wednesday night, she defended the “patriots” and “law-abiding citizens” who she said had been forced by the alleged election fraud to resort to “revolution.”

“I support peaceful protest, but I’m telling you, when you back the people of Virginia and across the United States of America into a corner, you’ll end up with a revolution,” she said. “And I believe that’s what you’re starting to see.”

After the first group of protesters breached the Capitol on Wednesday, D.C. Metropolitan Police took over handling the removal of crowds from the U.S. Capitol grounds, according to two people familiar with the response.

Two District officials familiar with the deployment said D.C. police Inspector Robert Glover, who heads the special event branch in the department’s Homeland Security Bureau, took over coordinating the response from various agencies and directing staff and resources to execute the plan for their removal.

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All four living former presidents — Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter — denounced Wednesday’s violent storming of the U.S. Capitol, with two condemning President Trump by name for stoking the rioting.

Obama said in a statement that history will remember violence “incited by a sitting president who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election.” But he also blamed “a political party and its accompanying media ecosystem” for playing along with Trump’s falsehoods, saying Republican leaders can either continue down a dark path or “choose reality.”

About 30 people had been arrested by D.C. police for curfew violations by 9:30 p.m., the office of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser said. Officials cautioned a more precise number will be made available on Thursday, and additional arrests are possible.

These curfew arrests are in addition to the 13 people arrested since Tuesday afternoon on other charges that include firearm offenses, assault and crossing police lines.

D.C. police arrested about a dozen Trump supporters for curfew violation on New York Avenue NW, near 15th Street about two blocks from the White House, just before 8 p.m.

With officers and bomb-sniffing dogs still sweeping the Capitol on Wednesday night, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), chair of the committee that controls the Capitol Police budget, held a news conference from his office via Zoom. He thanked those in the department who acted heroically in the face of the mob but said answers can’t come soon enough about the failures of planning that allowed the crowd to storm the Capitol, and images of some officers who appeared to allow protesters in.

“There were clearly enormous strategic and planning failures by the Capitol Police, by the Sergeant at Arms and anyone else who was a part of coordinating this effort. This is the United States Capitol building, with the United States Congress in session handling the presidential election process,” said Ryan, head of the House Appropriations Committee’s legislative branch subcommittee.