She did no violence to any person. She was just accused of trying to crawl through a window.
The coward must have panicked and thought this woman was coming after him...though he was surrounded by cops and there was a barricade up even if she had managed to get through the window.
Why do you think the mob was chanting "Hang Mike Pence!" and calling out "Nancy, where are you?!?" It's a rhetorical question. They were doing so in order to terrorize them and make them fear that the mob intended to harm or kill them, our congressional members as well.
So they
wanted people to fear them and wanted "for your safety", the police officers to get out of their way and not interfere with their attempts to get their hands on the people they come there to confront.
Except NO ONE is ever required to give Ashli or any of them the benefit of the doubt when they so plainly made it clear through their violent acts, not only against the police officers but the smashing of the doors and windows to gain access to restricted areas of the Capital, the threats they verbalized, etc. that they were willing to do whatever it took, up to and including violence, to prevent Joe Biden from being certified as the next duly elected President of the United States.
All of these things combined presented the officers as well as Lt. Byrd with each of the three elements that need to be present in order to use deadly force against a threat - ability, opportunity and jeopardy:
Ability means that the other person has the power to kill or to cripple you.
Opportunity means that the circumstances are such that the other person would be able to use his ability against you.
Jeopardy means that the other person’s actions or words provide you with a reasonably-perceived belief that he intends to kill you or cripple you.
The fact that the threat was not a "person" but instead was in the form of a violent mob which could easily over power the officers provided the
ability. There was a woman early on that day who died when she was trampled to death by the mob. The shear numbers of the mob made them a threat under our self-defense laws with the
ability to use those numbers to inflict harm or death on their targets
. Also one of the mob members was yelling to the others regarding one of the officers who was trying to keep them from entering at all "Kill him with his own gun, kill him with his gun!"
Had the mob been able to breach that locked door they could have easily overrun the officers in the speaker's lobby. Some members of the mob would be free to fight with the police while other mob members could immediately go after our congressional members who were their ultimate target. The officers apparently felt that as long as the mob was on the other side of that locked door, they didn't have the
opportunity to do much nor was the required element of
opportunity present that that would allow them to use deadly force. However,
IF they had breached that door, then the mob would have then had the
opportunity to inflict whatever harm they wanted on both the officers and our congressional members.
Finally
jeopardy in this case is the easiest element to prove in my opinion, because of their words and deeds prior to arriving at the door leading to the speakers lobby. Had they breached that last barrier then all of the officers and our congressional representatives' lives would have been in
jeopardy since the mob members also would have at that point had both the
ability and
opportunity to do so.
So they were angry because Donald Trump had put into their minds that the
ONLY reason that he lost the election was because someone somewhere did something that caused the election to be stolen from him/them. He additionally indicated that Mike Pence was instrumental in the wrongdoings as well. He lit the fuse, pointed them down Pennsylvania Ave (but did not go WITH them as promised) and the rest is history as they say
They showed up at the U.S. Capital to let our representatives know how unhappy they were with the election results and intended to prevent the results from being certified. They erected mock gallows with a noose for "hanging Mike Pence", they shouted out his name and Nancy Pelosi's as well. They smashed, stomped and caused destruction all along their path to get to the remaining Congress members in the building.
So when you
INTENTIONALLY do and say things to make people afraid of you to the point where they are fleeing for their lives WHY would you then be surprised that you are viewed as a threat and then dealt with accordingly?
People get shot and killed all of the time for posing a lot less of a threat than the people who stormed the Capital on January 6th.
What do the police ALWAYS say when they have to use their weapon to shoot and kill someone? "I was in fear for my life". You don't think any of those officers or our representatives were fearful for their lives that day?
There was plenty of
legal justification for using deadly force and everyone should be grateful that it only took one shot and one casualty to repel them away from their intended target but the officers were smart, they knew if they started shooting all hell would break out and so many more people would have been injured or killed.