Officer died of natural causes after Jan. 6 riot

Brian Sicknick suffered two strokes after battling rioters at the U.S. Capitol, Washington medical examiner Francisco Diaz said Monday. Capitol police leadership and members of Congress counted the officer among those killed when a crowd stormed the building on Jan. 6. Early reports said Sicknick died after rioters hit him on the head with a fire extinguisher, and a follow-up investigation charged two men with assaulting him by spraying him with a chemical irritant. But the official autopsy findings, first reported by The Washington Post, said he died of natural causes, not injuries.

Did the riot have anything to do with his death? Diaz told the Post the events of Jan. 6 “played a role in his condition” but did not elaborate. The U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement that the agency accepted the medical examiner’s findings but still considered Sicknick to have died in the line of duty, “courageously defending Congress and the Capitol.”

Dig deeper: Read Harvest Prude’s report in The Stew about the effect of the riot on the Capitol police force.