These NC conservatives witnessed deadly Capitol riot. The mob went too far, they said.
For Joshua Flores and Michele Morrow, two North Carolinians who witnessed the mayhem around the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, the day began peacefully.
At a rally near the White House, President Trump urged his supporters to go to the Capitol to make their voices heard. The crowd followed his advice. Soon, thousands of supporters were marching down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Flores, 25, had just entered the Capitol grounds when someone with a megaphone spread the news that Vice President Mike Pence had rejected the president’s call to overturn Joe Biden’s election.
“That was the breaking point,” said Flores, who runs Latinos for Freedom, a group that educates Latinos on conservative values. “That really set people off.”
Soon, Flores heard people shouting, “Rush the Capitol!”
“You could see people start to move forward,” he said. “And the police fell back.”
Police began shooting tear gas canisters and flash bang grenades into the crowd. Some people hurled them back at officers.
Police soon realized they were vastly outnumbered. Flores estimates that he saw fewer than 200 police officers — and thousands of people surrounding the Capitol.
“They knew there was a big crowd coming,” Flores said. “It seemed like they were way under prepared.”
Later, he saw a large crowd prying open a locked door on the side of the Capitol building. He also saw people using sticks and pipes to shatter one of the building’s windows.
Flores hails from central North Carolina but declined to disclose his hometown for fear of reprisals. He said he and others who gathered hoped to “put the fear of God into our politicians” — and that they deserved to have their voices heard. But when some turned to violence and destruction of property, he said, they went too far.
“That’s not the Republican Party,” he said.
‘I hope you get arrested’
Morrow, a 49-year-old nurse from Cary, said the vast majority of people near the Capitol weren’t violent or destructive.
But at one point that afternoon, she saw a man and a woman banging on a window to the Capitol. She traded words with the two.
“I said, ‘Doing this makes us no better than Antifa. We are here to ask our Congress to uphold the law. And you are breaking it. You’re making a bad name for everyone here,’ ” said Morrow, who works as an activist with the conservative PAC Liberty First Grassroots.
The man and the woman were having none of it.
“They said, ‘You’re not really a patriot if you’re not willing to go the extra step. We’ve talked long enough.’”
“I said, “I hope you get arrested.”
Later, Morrow said, she saw the window had been broken.
“I was frustrated and disgusted when I found people had broken in (to the Capitol),” she said. “I felt it was so immature and was not going to solve anything.”
Flores said some police officers only made the situation worse. He recalls seeing officers remove barricades on the east side of the Capitol to let a crowd through.
“Police went and opened the gate and waved people on. … It was almost like they wanted people to destroy the building.”
Later, the riots turned bloody. A woman from San Diego, California, was fatally shot by police, and a U.S. Capitol police officer died after rioters struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher, according to the New York Times. Three other people later died after suffering medical emergencies, according to published sources.
Police arrested 80 people, including at least seven from North Carolina.
Flores saw a middle-aged man who’d been tear gassed and heard him shout to the crowd: “Man, they’re shooting people.”
“I thought he was a little crazy,” Flores said, “until we found out later someone had actually died.”
Aaron Alexander, 24, of Durham, was there, too, watching as the crowds advanced on the Capitol. Police were “completely overwhelmed,” he said.
“For every one person who had to retreat because of tear gas, there were 15 more going in,” he said.
“Most of them were doing their best not to hurt the officers,” Alexander said, “but they did make it very clear they were going to walk through those barriers.”
Fourteen police officers were reported injured, in addition to the Capitol police officer who later died.
This story was originally published January 8, 2021 at 2:41 PM.
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