A U.S. Capitol officer holds a program in which people honor the remains of U.S. Capitol officer Brian Sicknick, who lays in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, DC on February 3, 2021, pay their respects.
Demetrius Freeman | AFP | Getty Images
Police officer Brian Sicknick suffered strokes and died a day after facing a seditious crowd of supporters of former President Donald Trump during the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
The verdict, released Monday by Chief Medical Officer Francisco Diaz’s office, could make prosecutions difficult for two men accused last month of using a chemical spray to attack Sicknick.
The bureau found that Sicknick, 42, was “sprayed with a chemical outside the US Capitol” during the invasion around 2:20 pm
At around 10 p.m. that night, Sicknick collapsed in the Capitol and was ruled to be hospitalized. He died there at 9:30 p.m. the following evening.
Sicknick’s official cause of death was “acute brainstem and cerebellar infarction due to acute thrombosis of the basilar artery,” said Diaz’s office.
The mode of death – the circumstances surrounding Sicknick’s death – was “natural”. This term is used when death is caused solely by illness and is judged not to be accelerated by injury.
But, in an interview with the Washington Post, Diaz noted Sicknick’s role in confronting the rioters hours before his collapse, saying, “Everything that happened played a role in his condition.”
Even so, Diaz told the newspaper that Sicknick’s autopsy found no evidence that the officer was allergic to the chemical irritants that were sprayed on him during the riot.
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