In the early minutes of what turned into one of the most brutal attacks on American democracy, U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards turned to her sergeant.

“I think we're going to need a few more people down here,” she said as she watched members of far-right extremist groups begin to verbally attack the five officers holding the line.

After the group stormed the line of bike racks in between them, Edwards was knocked unconscious. When she awoke, she bravely ran toward the Capitol and into a bloody fight.

In a brief moment where Edwards found herself shielded by a line of Metropolitan Police officers, the Georgia-born cop could finally take in what was happening.

“What I saw was just a war scene,” she said.

“There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up. I saw friends with blood all over their faces,” she recalled. “I was slipping in people's blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos.”

Edwards’ haunting testimony Thursday in front of the congressional Jan. 6 committee echoed throughout screens across the nation during the first of several televised hearings in the weeks to come.  

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack — composed of seven Democrats and two Republicans — gave a detailed first look at the findings of that investigation.

“Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power,” said U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, during her searing opening remarks.

The committee played never-before-seen, disturbing footage of the Jan. 6 attack. Video from police chest cameras, security cameras in the Capitol and social media posts of rioters were cut together to give a brutal depiction of the events that unfolded.

Viewers also saw video of Edwards falling to the ground under a bike rack and being trampled by the mob. She said she knew she couldn't hold the bike racks very long. 

"I felt the bike rack come on top of my head," she said. "And I was pushed backwards and my foot caught the stair behind me and my chin hit the handrail," she described. "Then at that point I had blacked out, but my back of my head clipped the concrete stairs behind me."

Still, when she awoke, coursing with adrenaline, she returned to duty.

An Atlanta native and University of Georgia graduate, Edwards was among a small group of officers who tried unsuccessfully to hold off one of the first waves of insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol that day.

Edwards was the first law enforcement officer injured, suffering a traumatic brain injury. Five officers would die that day or the days following, due to injuries sustained during the attack, including U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, whom Edwards recalled seeing on the ground “ghostly pale.” Sicknick died from a stroke the day after the attack.

Edwards said no police officer would ever be trained to handle the life-threatening situation she described as “hours of hand-to-hand combat.”

“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,” she said. 

The law enforcement officers who defended the U.S. Capitol during unrelenting attacks against the home of America’s democracy, came face-to-face with a violent, extremist mob which, committee lawmakers said, was provoked by the former president.

More than 800 people have been charged with crimes from that day, according to NPR, while 140 law enforcement officers sustained injuries.

Edwards said she was called a lot of things that day and in the days following: “Nancy Pelosi’s dog” and “a traitor to my country, my oath and my Constitution.”

“In actuality, I was none of those things.” she said. "I was an American, standing face-to-face with other Americans, asking myself many times — many, many times — how we'd gotten here.”

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