Ashli Babbitt – then called Ashli McEntee – was driving to the office when the anger inside his head reached a critical point.
The San Diego County resident turned on her cell phone and started recording.
“I’m really warm all of a sudden,” she started, looking away from the road to look at the camera. I’m sick of these politicians in this damn state. I can’t take it anymore, ”she said, her voice rising, her words coming out so fast she barely had time to breathe. “They are all concerned with what Trump is doing. How about we worry about what the hell you are making! “
Ashli Babbitt is shown in this photo from the Maryland driver’s license.
(Calvert County Sheriff’s Office)
The source of his anger: border security and more because of immigration. “California is suffering. Our homeless problem is out of control. Our drugs are out of control….
“I’m so tired of this. I’m awake, man.”
The November 2018 video hinted at the anger and mentality that two years later led the 35-year-old Air Force veteran to join Trump’s supporters in Washington and then make way for the Capitol. Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed by the Capitol Police on Wednesday as he tried to climb the broken glass of a barricaded door leading to the chamber where the House of Representatives was in the process of certifying Trump’s presidential defeat.
Family members identified her from a social media video about the shooting long before authorities gave them an official notification.
Her husband and family made few public comments, but ex-husband Timothy McEntee, who was with her at Alaska’s Eielson Air Force Base, described Babbitt as “a wonderful woman with a big heart and a strong mind”.
He wrote: “She loved America with all her heart. It really is a sad day. ”
The couple, both security experts whose tasks included finding explosives, were featured in a 2008 base publication for the adoption of a military working dog called Sorbon. Another military publication attributed to Babbitt at least eight deployments between the Air Force and the National Air Guard, including in Iraq.
Public records show that Babbitt, married in 2019, has had a pool service in the San Diego area since 2017. Court records show no criminal record and civil cases were limited to a credit card charge against her husband and a solitary business dispute. She displayed pictures of herself and her husband and supported the military on their professional websites.
But Babbitt’s presence on social media was totally different, promoting not only messages of support for Trump, but also hatred against those who called for COVID-19 restrictions, mistrust of mainstream media, and adherence to QAnon conspiracy theories, including that the Disney housed pedophiles and thousands of children mysteriously disappeared and – looming above all else – the country she loved was in danger. She promoted tweets that characterized blacks as criminals, while supporting other Trump supporters who are black.
She wrote that Trump is “one of the greatest warriors of the gods … leading the way for us patriots to rise without fear against everything we are facing”.
The day before his death, facing the prospect of weather-canceled flights to the capital, Babbitt replied on Twitter: “Nothing will stop us … they can try and try, but the storm is here and is falling on DC in less 24 hours …. dark to light! ”
“Dark to light”, often mixed with Christian references, is a hymn for QAnon’s followers and written by an Atlanta lawyer of whom Babbitt was a close follower, L. Lin Wood.
In early December, Babbitt retweeted Wood’s exhortation, “Give me freedom or give me death”, along with someone else’s post praising pro-Trump protesters kicking, punching and beating a masked antifascist demonstrator with heavy stakes. wood with their USA flags.
“Dark to light! May freedom sound and may God bless America! God knows, God sees and he’s coming! Nothing can stop what’s going on, ”Babbitt also tweeted in December, in objection to the Democrats who, she said, sold their souls to Satan.
In 2012, Babbitt’s political causes were much milder. On Facebook, for example, she supported Ron Paul’s libertarian candidacy for president. In 2018, she was expressing opposition to all gun laws and great concern about crime in the area she considered caused by incoming immigrants.
“I want politicians to start coming here and tell me that my reality is a lie,” said Babbitt in a video in the kitchen. “The frontier is an absolute [mess]… There are riots, there are arrests, there are rapes, there are drugs, there are claims, there are tons of problems, there are abandoned children. “
When COVID-19 forced deals to close and masked orders in San Diego, Babbitt’s often swearing rage was directed at one of the sources of those requirements: Gov. Gavin Newsom.
A San Diego County campaign organizer to oust Newsom from office was surprised to learn that Babbitt was a local supporter of the cause, participating in many of the same rallies in the area.
Stephanie Melvin, who works in a doctor’s office but is opposed to masking orders, said she is fighting orders from COVID-19 that prevent her from evicting a tenant who refuses to pay rent. And Melvin is furious at what she sees as arrogance and elitism in political leaders, like Newsom’s unmasked presence at an exorbitant dinner with lobbyists in November. “Our beautiful state is burning to the ground because of him,” she said.
She also shared some of Babbitt’s suspicions in the media, including whether those on the political right were behind Wednesday’s massive siege of the Capitol.
“It is the left that is consistently violent,” said Melvin.
On Thursday, the front door of Babbitt’s pool services company displayed a sign stating that it was a “Masked-Free Autonomous Zone, better known as America.”
Teri Figueroa and Alex Riggins of the San Diego Union-Tribune contributed to this report.