How many U.S. Capitol Police officers died by suicide in 2021 and 2022 after January 6 2021?

1. The simple count: one USCP suicide tied to January 6 response

Multiple major outlets and official summaries identify Howard Charles Liebengood, a U.S. Capitol Police officer, as having died by suicide on January 9, 2021 — three days after working extended shifts to secure the Capitol during the breach — and describe his death as part of the immediate post‑Jan. 6 toll among officers who defended the building ^{[1] [4] [3]}.

2. Why reporting often gives a larger “four suicides” number — different agencies

When news outlets and summaries note that “four officers” who responded to Jan. 6 later died by suicide, they are aggregating across multiple law enforcement agencies that sent personnel to the Capitol that day, not counting only U.S. Capitol Police employees. Reuters, The Guardian and other outlets counted four police suicides among officers who had guarded the building — but that group includes Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers Jeffrey L. Smith, Gunther Hashida and Kyle DeFreytag in addition to Liebengood; those three are identified as MPD in contemporaneous reporting ^{[2] [3] [5]}.

3. Timeline and official designations matter to interpretation

Howard Liebengood’s death occurred January 9, 2021 and was publicly identified early as a suicide; his family and advocates pushed for line‑of‑duty recognition, and the Department of Justice later determined his suicide qualified as a line‑of‑duty death in November 2022, a formal determination with benefits implications ^{[1] [4]}. The distinction between an officer’s employing agency and the single‑day response role complicates raw tallies that do not disaggregate employers versus responders ^[6].

4. The other fatalities often cited were not USCP suicides

Jeffrey L. Smith, Gunther Hashida and Kyle DeFreytag are repeatedly named in reporting about post‑Jan. 6 suicides, but those three were Metropolitan Police Department officers who had assisted at the Capitol; Smith’s suicide was ruled line‑of‑duty by a D.C. board in March 2022, but he was not a USCP officer ^{[5] [2] [6]}. Brian Sicknick, a USCP officer, died the day after the attack of a stroke after being assaulted during the riot; his death is distinct from the suicides and has been separately reported and commemorated ^{[7] [8]}.

5. Alternative readings and reporting caveats

Some public statements and summary pages (for example later White House and anniversary coverage) refer collectively to “four other officers” or “four officers died by suicide” without specifying agency boundaries, which can create the impression that multiple Capitol Police officers — plural — died by suicide; in the source pool provided, that aggregation mixes USCP and MPD personnel rather than documenting multiple USCP suicides ^{[9] [10]}. The available sources in this packet do not identify any additional U.S. Capitol Police suicides in calendar year 2022 beyond the posthumous administrative rulings tied to 2021 deaths ^{[1] [6]}.

6. Bottom line and limits of the record

Based on the reporting supplied, the count of U.S. Capitol Police officers who died by suicide after January 6, 2021 is one: Howard Liebengood (died January 9, 2021). Broader tallies of “officers” who died by suicide in 2021 list four law‑enforcement suicides among Jan. 6 responders, but three of those were Metropolitan Police Department officers, not USCP ^{[1] [2] [3]}. The reporting set provided does not document any additional U.S. Capitol Police suicides in 2022; if other sources exist that record a different agency breakdown or later USCP deaths by suicide, they are not included in the supplied material and therefore cannot be verified here ^[6].