Jan 6 officer’s suicide officially declared death ‘in the line of duty’

Jeffrey Smith is one of several officers to have died because of the events of 6 January 2021

It has been officially declared that a police officer who died by suicide after his experience at the Capitol riot of 6 January 2021 should be considered to have died “in the line of duty”.

Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith died nine days after the mob of Trump supporters violently attacked the US Capitol, during which he and many of his fellow officers were verbally and physically attacked.

According to a letter from the District of Columbia’s Police and Firefighters’ Retirement and Relief Board obtained by CNN, Smith himself “sustained a personal injury on January 6, 2021, while performing his duties and that his injury was the sole and direct cause of his death”.

The finding, which makes Smith’s family eligible for official survivors’ benefits intended to help the families of service members killed while on duty, follows a long campaign by his wife, Erin Smith.

According Ms Smith’s attorney, the investigation into the circumstances of the officer’s suicide was a “forensic investigation” from the outset, combining “evidence from the autopsy, expert witnesses, body camera footage and federal subpoenas” to prove that Smith “suffered a traumatic brain injury on January 6”.

He was not the only officer to take his own life after the riot. At least three others, Kyle DeFreytag, Gunther Hashida and Howard Liebengood, died by suicide in the months following the insurrection, footage from which shows officers being variously beaten, tased, dragged on the ground and crushed in doorways.

A panel of four officers testified to the 6 January select committee last July, describing in their remarks how some of them were subjected to racist abuse and death threats. Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilo Gonnell said that despite his military service in Iraq, nothing could have prepared him for what he encountered during the insurrection.

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