1 February 2021, Instagram post, Washington DC, USA
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And I immediately realised that I shouldn't have gone into the bathroom, I should have jumped in the closet. And so I open the door, when all of a sudden I hear that whoever was trying to get inside, got into my office. And then I realise that it's too late, that it's too late for me to get into the closet. And so I go back in and I hide back in in the bathroom, behind the door. And then I just start to hear these yells of, 'Where is she? Where is she? And I just thought to myself, they got inside.
And so I hide behind my door like this [demonstrates], like I'm here, and the bathroom door starts going like this, like the bathroom door's behind me, or rather in front of me, and I'm like this and the door hinges right here. And I just hear, where is she? Where is she? And this was the moment where I thought everything was over.
And the weird thing about moments like these is that you lose all sense of time. In retrospect maybe it was four seconds, maybe it was five seconds. Maybe it was 10 seconds. Maybe it was one second. I don't know. It felt like my brain was able to have so many thoughts in that moment, between these screams and these yells of 'where is she, where is she? '.
And so I go down and I just, I mean I thought I was going to die. And I had a lot of thoughts. You have a lot of thoughts, I think, when you're in a situation like that. And also one of those thoughts that I had was, you know, I just happened to be a spiritual person, and be raised in that context. And I really just felt like, you know, If this is the plan for me, then people will be able to take it from here. I had a lot of thoughts, But that was the thought that I had about you all. I felt that if this was the journey that my life was taking, that I felt that things were going to be okay.
And that, you know, I had fulfilled my purpose. Anyways, [wipes tears] sorry, guys. So anyways, as I'm hiding in this bathroom, hearing these yells of these men, or a man, just one man going, 'where is she? Where is she?' I start to look through the door hinge to see if I can see anything. And there's like a door here and there's like another door here, so I'm like, I'm like trying to look through two door hinges. And so I look through this door hinge, and I see this white man in a black beanie, bump — just like open the door of my personal office and come inside the personal office and yell again, 'Where is she?'.
And I have never been quieter in my entire life. I was just, I don't even know if I held my breath, but I was just, here, behind there, and I just start sliding down. And then all of a sudden I hear my staffer G, yell out, and he's, he's like, 'Hey, Hey, It's okay, come out, come out.'
So I'm like, I don't know, so deeply rattled, I'm still processing the end of my life, when I come out. And I come out and this man is a Capitol police officer, but this story doesn't end, It's a Capitol police officer, there was no partner, was not yelling, you know, 'Capitol police' et cetera, et cetera. But then it didn't feel right. Because he was looking at me with a tremendous amount of anger and hostility And things weren't adding up. Like there was no partner there, and there no one was yelling, he wasn't yelling, like, 'This is Capitol police. This is Capitol police.' And he was looking at me in all of this anger and, and hostility. And at first, you know, in, in my brain and in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, I just came from this super intesne experience just now. Maybe I'm reading into this, right? Like, maybe I'm projecting something onto him, maybe I'm just seeing anger, but maybe he's not trying to be angry. But I talked to G, my legislative director, after the fact and he said, 'no, I didn't know if he was there to help us or hurt us either'. And G was actually like, this man came with so much hostility that G was sizing him up and didn't know if he was gonna have to fight him.
That is how aggressive the situation was in that moment. And we couldn't even tell, we couldn't read if this was a good situation or a bad situation. It was so, like so many other communities in this country, that presence doesn't necessarily give you a clear signal if you're safe or not. And so the situation did not feel okay. And then he just looks at me, and yells at me, and he just goes, 'go down and then go to this other building'. I'm not gonna like name the specific building, but he basically says, 'go down and go to this building'. But he just says the name of the building. Doesn't say anything else. But we're so rattled in that moment. And the situation felt so volatile with this officer that I run over, I grabbed my bag and we just start running over to that building.
Now, mind you, we weren't escorted. He didn't come with us or follow us or anything like that. So G and I just start running to this other building. We run down and we run to this other building. And it wasn't until we get to that building that we realise he didn't give us a specific location. He didn't give us a room. He didn't give us a place to go to. He just said, 'go down.' He told us to go to a certain level of a certain building. And that level of that building was street level. And so we can hear, because the buildings were not secure yet, and this was around the time when the Capitol was being stormed, that we can like hear all of these rioters behind the glass of the doors, [makes rioting sound], you know, and we have no specific location to go to. We're in the hallway. We're in like, the Dunkin' Donuts of the basement, and we don't have any secure place to go.