At the first public hearing of the House select committee’s investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who was injured on Jan. 6, testified that she never imagined she would find herself in the middle of a battle.

Video Transcript

CAROLINE EDWARDS: I can just remember my breath catching in my throat because what I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I had seen out of the movies. I couldn't believe my eyes.

There were officers on the ground. You know, they were bleeding. They were throwing up. They had-- I mean, I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people's blood. You know, I was catching people as they fell.

You know, I was-- it was carnage. It was chaos. I can't even describe what I saw. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer I would find myself in the middle of a battle. You know, I'm trained to detain, you know, a couple of subjects and handle a crowd, but I'm not combat trained.

And that day, it was just hours of hand-to-hand combat, hours of dealing with things that were way beyond any law enforcement officer has ever trained for. And I just remember that moment of stepping behind the line and just seeing the absolute war zone that the west front had become.