Lt. Mike Byrd (photo, left), the Capitol Police officer who shot rioter Ashli Babbitt, told NBC News, “I know that day I saved countless lives.” (Read story here.)
A Republican congressman who witnessed the shooting agrees. Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) “felt that the Capitol police officer ‘didn’t have a choice’ but to shoot, and that this action ‘saved people’s lives’.” (Quoted from Wikipedia here.)
Rioters smashed a glass pane in a door defended by Byrd and two other officers that led to the Speaker’s Lobby, which led directly into the House chamber where dozens of Congress members were in the process of being evacuated.
Babbitt was the first rioter to climb through the opening. “A number of police and Secret Service were saying ‘Get back, get down, get out of the way,’” a witness said (quoted by Daily Beast here). She kept coming. Byrd told NBC News,“ If they get through that door, they’re into the House chamber and upon the members of Congress.”
He fired once, and she fell backwards. News reports are conflicting about whether she was hit in the left shoulder or neck. Police officers on the other side who managed to push through the crowd rendered aid to her, but she died later at a hospital.
The shooting was ruled justified after investigations by the Capitol Police and Department of Justice.
To many Trump supporters, Babbitt is a martyr, and racist Republicans are further inflamed by the fact a white woman was killed by a black man. But she was a rioter engaging in criminal violence, and he was a police officer doing his job.