“They were knocking on our door and trying to open it. And my husband sat with his foot against the door, praying that he wouldn’t come in,” said Murray, who was thrilled and visibly shaken to tell her experience that day.
“I wasn’t sure. It was a horrible feeling and it lasted a long time.”
When the pro-Trump crowd reached the Capitol building, Murray said he heard some of the protesters shout, “Kill the infidels” and “We saw them, they are in one of these rooms”.
“What I remember most vividly is that – I didn’t know if the door was locked, I mean, I go in and out of it, and I can’t remember if I locked it. And we had to be quiet. I don’t want them to know that we were there, where we were, “she said. “And I’m just looking at my husband, and we’re just – eye contact, we can see each other’s eyes, please, please, let this door be locked.”
Murray told Woodruff that he had “difficulty” talking about his experience because he doesn’t want troublemakers “to never feel that they instilled fear in me that prevented me from doing what I needed to do”. Members of Congress who wish to leave the attack are “being inspired by fear and that is what motivates them,” she said.
The senator said on Friday that she now feels less secure at the United States Capitol “because there is no bipartisan action on the part of Congress” to say that the violence is wrong.
“This is just an overwhelming thought for me today, as I sit and hear in this judgment that what they were trying to do was kill someone, not all of them for sure, but there were some of them, many of them,” Murray said. “They wanted to dominate our country, to dominate all of us, using brute force.”