Pennsylvania man among the dead following pro

A day after pro-Trump protesters laid siege to the U.S. Capitol in a bid to stop the certification of Joe Biden's election as president, the extent of the damage — to lives, property and the nation's social fabric — became distressingly clear.

Five people died Wednesday in the mayhem that broke out after President Donald Trump addressed a crowd of supporters and urged them to march to the Capitol and protest what would, in ordinary times, have been the mundane process of certifying the outcome of the election.

Among the dead was a Pennsylvania man, 50-year-old Benjamin Philips, who succumbed to an "apparent medical emergency," said the chief of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philips, a computer programmer and avid Trump supporter, died of a stroke. Police said Philips was from Ringtown, Schuylkill County, but the newspaper said he was from Bloomsburg, Columbia County.

The Inquirer said Philips founded the social network Trumparoo, named after a stuffed kangaroo meant to resemble the president, and arranged bus transportation to Washington on Wednesday.

Efforts to reach Philips’ relatives Thursday were unsuccessful.

Two other people, a 55-year-old man from Alabama and a 34-year-old woman from Georgia, also died of medical emergencies. Another woman — Ashli Babbitt, 35, an Air Force veteran from San Diego — was fatally shot in the Capitol by police, Chief Robert J. Contee said. And a Capitol police officer, Brian D. Sicknick, died Thursday of injuries received while engaging rioters.

D.C. authorities arrested 68 and cited at least a dozen people from Pennsylvania, including two on charges of unlawful entry and one on a charge of possession of a prohibited weapon. Others were cited for curfew violations.

Capitol Police said 14 were arrested, most for unlawful entry. More than 50 Capitol and D.C. police were injured, including several who were hospitalized. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf activated about 1,000 Pennsylvania National Guard members Thursday to help with security in Washington through President-elect Joe Biden's Jan. 20 presidential inauguration.

Even after 24 hours, the shocking events at the U.S. Capitol — perhaps the most recognizable symbol of democracy in the world — were hard to absorb. The photos and videos of rioters climbing walls, smashing windows, roving hallways and trying to push their way into the chambers of government where lawmakers huddled in terror mark the twilight of Trump's presidency as one of the darkest moments in American history.

Susan Gladfelter, 65, of West Rockhill Township, Bucks County, was part of the bus trip organized by Philips. The group arrived about 20 minutes before Trump's 11 a.m. speech and marched to the Capitol afterward.

"There were times where it was really moving, like yeah, these are fellow Americans that love their country like I do," Gladfelter said.

But around 2:30 p.m., the mood began to change. A young man close to her group chanted "Storm the building!" into a bullhorn.

"I was like, no, you don't storm the Capitol building," Gladfelter said. "I became really uncomfortable with some of the things that were going [on]."

She heard explosions that sounded like shots going off. She saw people pass barricades and scale the walls. And she wondered where the Capitol Police were.

"I totally support President Trump, but these people were extremists," she said. "These people just weren't patriots. They were lawbreakers, and that was not the purpose of yesterday."

Gladfelter's group decided to leave and headed to a prearranged meeting place a few hours early. No one could reach Philips — the group knew him only as "Ben" — and learned from the bus driver that he died.

"It was just an overwhelmingly sad day," Gladfelter said.

While the siege was broken and lawmakers returned to the Capitol to finish the certification, the outrage it inspired seems unlikely to abate. Democratic Sen. Bob Casey on Thursday joined a chorus of other lawmakers and officials demanding Vice President Mike Pence invoke the 25th Amendment to declare Trump unfit and remove him from office.

"While shocking, yesterday's events were entirely foreseeable," Casey said in a statement. "They were the direct result of President Trump's lies about the integrity of our most recent election, and his frequent incitements to violence."

Lehigh Valley party leaders seemed equally divided. Northampton County Republican Committee Chairperson Lee Snover, an early and vocal supporter of Trump, was in Washington to protest the election but didn't get close to the Capitol as the rioting broke out.

She downplayed the violence on social media Wednesday, but in a statement Thursday, said she wasn't aware of the extent of the destruction until she got home. She said she was "saddened to tears" seeing U.S. Rep. Susan Wild and other lawmakers forced into lockdown.

"I would expect there to be a full investigation to determine all the facts," Snover said. "It is critically important for people not to rush to judgment, or to bandwagon on false narratives before the facts are known."

Lehigh County Republican Committee Chairperson Glenn Eckhart feared Wednesday's violence would continue America's political divisiveness, which he blamed on leaders of both national parties.

In Lehigh County, he's been trying to build a "big tent" Republican Party to make up for the 35,000-voter advantage Democrats hold.

"I want to keep the vision of Reagan, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Coolidge, Roosevelt, Grant," Eckhart said. "We can't hold a litmus test. We’ll never win."

Northampton County Democratic Committee Chairperson Matt Munsey called for elected leaders at the state and federal level who allowed the spread of misinformation to be held accountable.

"It wasn't a small number of people," Munsey said. "It was a large, angry mob that had immediately before been incited by the president but were also spurred on by the actions of senators and Congress members who said, ‘Don't trust the outcome of the election.’ "

Lehigh County Democratic Committee Chairperson Ed Hozza compared the aftermath to the time following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"While we’ve been through trials and tribulations before, this time it was the enemy within. That is the most troubling part of the entire day," Hozza said.

Still, he expressed some optimism, hoping the violence would shock Americans into a time of reflection. The divisiveness of the last four years might die down if Trump follows the unwritten rule of former presidents leaving the political stage, he said.

"Whether he will fade into the distance or continue to seize the limelight remains to be seen," he said.

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