Capitol Police Officers Who Responded to 1/6 Riot Give Harrowing Accounts on CNN: ‘Y’all, They’re in the Building’

Two members of the Capitol Police force sat down with CNN’s Whitney Wild to give their firsthand accounts of the January 6th Capitol insurrection.

Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, who emigrated from the Dominican Republic when he was 12 and later served in Iraq as a member of the Army Reserve, joined the force in 2008. He said he thought he might die on January 6. He also revealed the nastiness he encountered that day.

“What was the worst thing they called you?,” Wild asked.

“Traitor.”

“Why was that the worst thing?”

Gonell became visibly emotional and said, “Because I served my country. I went overseas to protect our homeland from foreign threats, but yet here I am battling them in our own Capitol.”

“It hurts me that the country that I love, that I came in, that I sacrificed so much don’t care about us. They don’t.”

Gonell explained, “It was very scary, because I thought I was going to lose my life. Then I started getting beat up with a flagpole, with a flag – the American flag that I swore to defend here and overseas. And I don’t know how I got this strength, but I hit that person so hard that they let me go. I started backpedaling.”

“When we were in the Lower West Terrace and throughout the whole ordeal I had people calling me immigrant, you’re not American, you’re a traitor,” Gonell said.

Gonell said he was beaten by rioters, who cut his hand and mangled his foot so badly, he needed surgery.
Officer Byron Evans also said he thought he was going to die that day.

“I remember thinking all this stuff. Like, Byron, this is the day.”

“I went to my sergeant and told him I think we need to lock down the chamber,” said Evans. “And as I’m having that conversation with him, another officer comes up, Eugene Goodman, and he tells us, ‘Y’all, they’re in the building.'”

Evans said the rioters actions that day made him angry,

“You just feel a personal connection to something that you protect every single day,” he said.” “And then to see the, on the floor, just doing whatever they wanted to do, doing things that no one is allowed to do, so, so cavalier – it definitely made you angry,” Evans said. “To see them up there, like it was some fun house, that will always stick in my mind.”

Watch above via CNN.