Death of QAnon Follower at Capitol Leaves a Wake of Pain
... Her death has left her family grappling to understand how Boyland, who they say had never voted before 2020, wound up waving a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag amid a crowd of fanatic supporters of the former president before walking up the steps of the Capitol to her death.
Their frustration deepened further last week when Republicans in the Senate blocked an effort to establish an independent commission to look into the origins and the handling of the attack on the Capitol.
“Why anyone would NOT want to find out what happened, even just to prevent it from happening again, is beyond me,” Boyland’s older sister, Lonna Cave, said in a text message after the vote.
For months before the rally, Boyland had bombarded her friends and relatives with messages and links to long videos about the fantastical theories she had come to accept as fact. Many of the false claims spilled from QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy-theory movement that rose in popularity over the course of his presidency and promoted the idea that many Democrats and celebrities are part of a global pedophile ring — a theory that 15% of Americans believe, according to a poll last week. Many of its supporters falsely believed that President Joe Biden had stolen the election, and some attended Trump’s Jan. 6 rally.
Boyland’s sudden fixation so alarmed her family members and friends that some of them asked her to stop talking to them about politics — or just to stop talking altogether.
Some of her closest friends believe that Boyland was a vulnerable target for the conspiracy theorists. After a stint in drug rehabilitation, she had returned to her parents’ home and largely avoided drugs for several years, her family said. But the isolation brought about by the pandemic was making it harder. QAnon filled a void in her life, they said, helping distract her from thoughts of returning to drugs even as it acted as a different kind of hallucinogen.
“I was worried that she was trading one addiction for another,” said Blaire Boyland, her younger sister. “It just seemed like, yes, she’s not doing drugs, but she’s very obsessively online, watching all these YouTube videos and going down the rabbit hole.”
The family is also still struggling to understand how she died. From the video of the chaotic siege, it appeared that she had died after being caught in a crush of rioters. But the autopsy by the Washington medical examiner’s office did not find evidence of trampling and concluded that she had overdosed on amphetamines.
Family members said it was likely that the only amphetamine in her body was the Adderall she took every day by prescription, although it appeared that she might have taken at least twice her prescribed dose.
“We just want to find out what happened, to be able to rest,” Cave said. “This has been so messed up. We just want to grieve the normal way.” ...
For example:
Fat cat Repugs. 
FuQQin' RepuQs!
