President-elect Joe Biden vowed Friday that those responsible for the death of a Capitol Police officer following the riots that engulfed the nation’s capital this week will be held to account.
In remarks in Wilmington, Del., Biden offered his condolences to the family of Officer Brian Sicknick, who died on Thursday night from injuries sustained while engaging with pro-Trump rioters at the Capitol in Washington on Wednesday.
“Let me begin by expressing my deep sympathy for the family of Capitol Officer Sicknick, who has died in the line of duty,” Biden said as he prepared to announce members of his economics team.
“The people responsible should be held accountable — and they will be,” the president-elect added.
Sicknick’s death brought the number of fatalities from the chaos that unfolded on Wednesday to five. One participant in the rampage, which was intended to disrupt Congress’s certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory, was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer as she climbed through a broken window.
Three others died from what police believe to have been medical emergencies during the mayhem.
Sicknick joined the Capitol Police in 2008. The department said in a statement night that he had died at a local hospital at about 9:30 p.m. on Thursday. Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Branch and the Capitol Police are among those investigating Sicknick’s death.