The mother of the Capitol Police officer who died the day after the January 6 riot is featured in a political ad where she blames “people like” Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake for her son’s death, but in response, Lake offered her empathy.

In the ad, funded by the Republican Accountability Project, Gladys Sicknick calls Lake “very dangerous for our country” and directly blamed “people like” Lake for her son Brian’s death. Sicknick died a day after the riot, and his death was ultimately determined to be from natural causes as he suffered a series of strokes.

A CBS reporter asked Lake about the advertisement on Wednesday night, and she responded by offering her empathy to Gladys Sicknick. Of note, the reporter wrongly told Lake that Gladys’s first name was Cindy.

“I Just want to say to Cindy Sicknick I am so sorry about the death of your son,” said Lake. “It is tragic. I’m a mother myself, and it breaks my heart. That is a wound when you lose a child, no matter how old they are, that never heals.”

Lake continued:

And so I don’t want to disparage her, she doesn’t know me, I wasn’t anywhere near the Capitol on January 6, and I understand that her son died the following day from a stroke or by natural causes and I feel for here, and I see the pain in her eyes. And I would never try to disparage or hurt her because I know when a mother has pain like that, there’s no way to heal that.

The former Fox 10 Phoenix anchor of more than two decades added that she often encounters parents grieving the loss of a child on the campaign trail:

That’s why I feel for the moms and dads who hit me up on the campaign trail and they grab me, and you can spot them from across the room. There is a loss in their lives that can never be replaced and we’re losing thousands of young people. When they tell they lost a son to fentanyl, when they lost a daughter to fentanyl poisoning, this is why we are pushing so hard to secure that border and stop fentanyl from pouring across. 

Lake went on to note that she is unfazed by and “used to” attack ads after grueling primary and general election campaigns.  

“I’ve had probably more money spent against me than any candidate in Arizona in attack ads, but the people know me here,” said Lake. “They’re not believing what they are seeing in the attack ads. I’ve been in their homes for 27 years.”