Fourth officer who responded to US Capitol attack dies by suicide

A fourth police officer who responded to the US Capitol riot during the 6 January insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump, has been confirmed dead.

Washington DC’s Metropolitan police department (MPD) confirmed late Monday that another of their officers, Kyle DeFreytag, died by suicide earlier in July, just hours after declaring that MPD officer Gunther Hashida killed himself on 29 July.

In January MPD officer Jeffrey Smith, a 12-year veteran of the force, and Capitol police officer Howard Liebengood, a 16-year veteran, both of whom also responded to the 6 January attack, died by suicide.

DeFreytag, who was 26, was deployed to protect the Capitol after police cleared the building of rioters, and was involved in enforcing a curfew, the department said.

The MPD chief, Robert Contee, had notified personnel of DeFreytag’s death on 10 July in a department-wide message, the department confirmed.

He had been an MPD officer for five years, according to his obituary.

Hashida had helped secure the Capitol on 6 January as part of the emergency response team within MPD’s special operations division after a mob of thousands of Trump supporters stormed the building.

‘This is how I’m going to die’; police tell panel of trauma of Capitol attack

The announcement of the deaths of DeFreytag and Hashida came a week after several officers testified to a House of Representatives committee investigating the 6 January insurrection, when extremists stormed the Capitol to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win over Trump in the 2020 presidential election.