All I wanted to do was get my son and get out of there.It had only been maybe 5 minutes, if that, since I had walked into this totally surreal scene. My face was burning. I was still trying to help this protester get his foot unstuck, panicking. I kept thinking, “We just need to get out of here fast, I need to get my son and get the heck out of here!”
I had just barely composed myself after being sprayed in the face, and was still trying to help the stuck foot guy, when my son grabbed my arm, swung me around and away from the barricade and shielded me with his body. An officer was just a second away from spraying me in the face again, but now he was saturating my son’s back with that burning spray instead. I asked him what the heck was going on, “Why are the police throwing flash bangs and shooting rubber bullets at everybody, this isn’t normal, right?”
My son, having only been there just a few minutes longer than me, had already been sprayed with the high-powered streaming burning and blinding spray a couple of times and he was a little bit pissed-off I guess you could say. “No, this isn’t normal,” he shouted back. “They’re firing on the whole crowd for no reason. They have no reason to be firing on us, none whatsoever.” He was mad and I understood that, but still I just wanted to get the heck out of that nightmare and I told him that. If he hadn’t have used his body to shield me, I would have been sprayed at pointblank range for a second time. My son protected me from injury and we had to get out of there before we got hurt worse.
As we tried to orient ourselves out of the crowd, I was almost hit in the head with a huge metal sign that a group of protesters were carrying above their heads through the crowd. When I swerved away to avoid the metal frame hitting my face, I fell down on the stairs. My son was instantly there to help me up and he gave the sign a good shove in the other direction away from us.
Right then, I look up toward the Capitol building and I notice that there are police officers perched up in the balcony and a few perched on the façade; this must be where all the bullets were coming from, these officers were situated like snipers!