More than a month and a half after his death, investigators have remained tight lipped about the cause of death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick.
Even his mother, 74-year-old Gladys Sicknick, said the family has largely been kept in the dark about the cause of his death.
“He wasn’t hit on the head, no. We think he had a stroke. But we don’t know anything for sure.We’d love to know what happened.”
Despite the family being largely kept in the dark, that hasn’t stopped politicians and media figures from exploiting Sicknick’s death for political gain.
“...while politicians have grandstanded and rushed to judgment no one has yet given the family the answers they need...
...in the six weeks since his death the truth has taken a backseat to the myth of the brutal attack. Democratic Impeachment Managers even brazenly cited the incident - that he was stricken in the head by a fire extinguisher - as fact in pre-trial articles filed February 2 despite already growing doubts.”
The Daily Mail reports that on January 8th:
“Sicknick’s own brother, Ken, spoke with ProPublica and said that his brother had been in good spirits and had texted him after returning to the department.
He said, ‘He texted me last night and said, “I got pepper-sprayed twice,” and he was in good shape.’”
That same day, January 8, Sicknick’s father, Charles, 81, told Reuters that on January 7, as they rushed from their homes in New Jersey to DC, the family were told that Sicknick had a blood clot on his brain and had suffered a stroke. He was being kept alive on a ventilator but was dead by the time they got there.
Yet these few publicly available facts were bulldozed over by political fervor and it was the unattributed account of a brutal attack, also reported by the Associated Press, that gained traction.”
Earlier this month, even CNN reported that investigators were struggling to build a case over his death and that “according to one law enforcement official, medical examiners did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma, so investigators believe that early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true.”
Today Sicknick’s family just want an explanation as to why her son ended up on life support just hours after telling his sibling he was fine.
As the Daily Mail continues about Sicknick's mom:
“She said that the intense speculation that has swirled up around his death and its politicizing has only compounded the family’s pain.
She said, ‘It hasn’t helped, no. It’s very hard not knowing [what happened] but we have to wait for a finding just like everybody else.’”
Patrick Cockburn penned an incredible piece in the UK's Independent where he takes on the media's reckless reporting on Sicknick's death and the riots in general.
He writes:
"If the US government really was the target of an armed insurrection, then this will be used to justify repression, as it was after 9/11, and not just against right wing conspiracy theorists. By becoming partisan instruments for spreading fake news, the media undermines its own credibility.
A problem with a giant news story like the Capitol invasion is that at first it is over-covered before we know the full facts, and then it is under-covered when those facts begin to emerge...
As a news event, the Capitol invasion showed that when it comes to spreading “fake facts”, the traditional media can be even more effective than the social media that is usually blamed."