What did Ashli Babbitt do in Air Force? Woman shot dead in Capitol riots only repaid $3,400 of a $65,000 loan
Dubbed an “excellent patriot, a serious military woman, and a strong Trump supporter”, Ashli Babbitt is being mourned by her family and friends after she was shot dead during the Capitol riots. Babbitt was shot as she and dozens of other rioters tried to enter the Speaker's Lobby inside the building by smashing a door, beyond which was the chambers of the House of Representatives and several lawmakers. Amid the heated commotion and chaos, video footage captured the gunshot as she crumpled to the ground.
Clips show her yelling “Go! Go!” as two men hoist her to a smashed glass panel on the door while another man yells, “He’s got a gun!” Footage shows a Capitol Police officer firing at Babbitt, who stumbles back with blood pouring out of her mouth. Graphic visuals of the episode have been floating around on the Internet. After the disturbing incident, one question on all minds is: Who really was Ashli Babbitt?
Early life and marriages
Earlier known as Ashli McEntee, she grew up in an apolitical home with four younger brothers. Their father worked in commercial flooring and their mother in a school program. After high school, she enlisted in the Air Force and worked as an enlisted security forces controller. Her primary role was to guard gates at Air Force bases and she was soon deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Babbitt's grandfather, Tony Mazziott, told 'Good Morning America' in an emotional interview, “She served time in the military and she's passionate about everything, particularly Donald Trump for some reason.” She soon met Timothy McEntee while she was on active duty from 2004 to 2008. After marriage, the two had a military dog named Sorbon. Babbitt's ex McEntee called her a “wonderful woman with a big heart and a strong mind” in an email to The San Diego Union-Tribune.
On June 25, 2019, she married her second husband Aaron Babbitt and the couple lived in a modest duplex in Spring Valley, near San Diego. The two met at Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant and she filed for divorce from McEntee in 2018.
Did you know that she once harassed her husband's former girlfriend? According to a protection order, Ashli approached her on a roadway and had rear-ended her car three times. “She was screaming at me and verbally threatening,” the complaint read and the former girlfriend again applied for a protection order the following year.
What did she do in the Air Force?
According to ABC News, Babbitt served a total of 12 years in the Air Force, Air Force Reserves and Air National Guard as a security forces controller and had the enlisted rank of senior airman. Security force controllers are responsible for providing security at Air Force bases, according to military records.
The New York Times reports she was assigned to a unit based near Washington that is known as the “Capital Guardians” as their primary missions was defending the city. In what the Air Force calls “civil disturbance missions”, security forces in the squadron regularly train with riot shields and clubs, the report explains. As per an Air Force spokeswoman, she was deployed twice more, to the United Arab Emirates in 2012 and 2014.
Why did she leave the military?
The Associated Press reported that according to the Air Force, Ashli was on active duty from 2004 to 2008, most recently at Dyes Air Force Base near Abilene, Texas. She was also member of the Air Force Reserve from 2008 to 2010 and the Air National Guard from 2010 to 2016.
In 2016, Babbitt left the military as a relatively low-ranking senior airman, much before she could have become eligible for a pension. From 2015, she had started working in security at Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant in Maryland — where she met her husband — and was employed there until 2017, according to a representative for Exelon, the energy company that runs the plant.
A look at her business
Soon after, she helped purchase Fowlers Pool Service and Supply, and worked with her family on it. “We all worked together as a family — my other little brother, me, her husband, me, my uncle,” her brother Roger Witthoeft said. “It was kind of nice, a family affair.”
However, the family struggled in business and reported took a costly short-term business loan in 2017. Moreover, leaving the mililtary gave her time to participate in politics. The door of the pool-supply company had a poster that dubbed it a “mask free autonomous zone, better known as America,” where “we shake hands like men, fist bump like homies.”
Crimes and legal troubles
With her business in trouble, Babbitt took a loan at an interest rate of 169 percent, according to court filings. Struggling with finances, she stopped making payments, only repaying about $3,400 of the $65,000 borrowed from the lender, EBF Partners, and was soon sued, according to the records.
That's not the only legal trouble she had. In August 2016, Babbitt smashed a woman’s car three times in Calvert County, Maryland, and was said to have pursued her in a violent “road rage.” She was charged with reckless endangerment and acquitted months later.
Hint of her political anger can be gauged from a 2018 video she made while driving to office.
"I’m like really heated, all of a sudden,” she began, "I am so sick of these politicians in this goddamned state. I can’t take it anymore,” she said, her words pouring out so fast she barely had time to breathe. “They’re all worried about what Trump is doing. How about we worry about what the hell you’re doing!”
The day before she made her way to the Capitol and her death, facing the prospect of weather-canceled flights to Washington, Babbitt replied on Twitter, “Nothing will stop us….they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours....dark to light!”