‘Chemical burns to my face.’ Police captain from Missouri testifies on Capitol chaos
A police captain told senators Tuesday that chemical burns on her face have yet to heal from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Captain Carneysha Mendoza, a Park University graduate and Capitol Police officer for 19 years, was the dramatic leadoff witness at the Senate Rules Committee and Senate Homeland Security Committee joint hearing on the security breakdown that allowed rioters to breach the Capitol and disrupt the certification of the Electoral College results.
Mendoza, an Army veteran and field commander in the agency’s Special Operations Division, described four hours of chaos as she and other officers fought to regain control of the Capitol from rioters.
“I proceeded to the rotunda where I noticed a heavy smoke-like residue and smelled what I believed to be military grade CS gas, a familiar smell. It was mixed with fire extinguisher spray deployed by rioters,” testified Mendoza, who grew up in Festus, Missouri.
“The rioters continued to deploy CS into the rotunda. Officers received a lot of gas exposure, which is worse inside the building than outside because there’s nowhere for it to go. I received chemical burns to my face, which still have not healed to this day.”
The hearing — the first of what promises to be many after the unprecedented attack— seeks to clarify conflicting accounts from current and former leaders of the various security agencies regarding preparation for and response to last month’s unprecedented attack.
Mendoza said that before she made her way into the rotunda, she had to push through hundreds of rioters. At one point her arm became stuck between the crowd and railing. She believes it would have been broken if a Capitol Police sergeant had not been able to free her.
“I witnessed officers being knocked to the ground and hit with various objects being thrown by the rioters… I immediately assumed command in the rotunda and called for additional assets. Officers began to push the crowd out the door,” Mendoza said.
“After a couple hours officers cleared the rotunda, but had to physically hold the doors closed because it had been broken by the rioters. Officers begged me for relief because they were unsure how long they could physically hold the door closed with the crowd banging on the door for re-entry.”
Two decades earlier, Mendoza was among the Army forces that responded to the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon.
“As an American and an Army veteran, it’s sad to see us attacked by our fellow citizens,” she said of the Jan. 6 attack.
Following Mendoza’s testimony, the committee turned to the former leaders of the Capitol security offices: former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, former House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving and former Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger.
All three men stepped down from their positions in the wake of the riot.
Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, Ranking Republican on the Senate Rules Committee, focused his line of questioning on the failure to mobilize the D.C. National Guard ahead of Jan. 6 and the contradictory statements from Capitol security leaders.
Sund has said he requested National Guard assistance two days before the attack, but Irving testified that three had agreed that the intelligence did not justify a request for the guard to mobilize and they were instead requested to stand by.
“They must’ve been standing way away from where we needed them if it took hours for them to get here,” Blunt responded.
Sund testified that he asked Irving to approve a request for the guard’s assistance at 1:09 p.m. on Jan. 6 as police violently clashed with the pro-Trump crowd outside the Capitol, but Irving did not approve it until an hour later.
Irving testified that he had no recollection of the conversation with Sund and did not receive a request until after 2 p.m. He said he had no phone record of a request from Sund.
This story was originally published February 23, 2021 at 1:00 PM with the headline "‘Chemical burns to my face.’ Police captain from Missouri testifies on Capitol chaos."
