Friendly Fire?

So as this was warrant speed, as soon as the door swung open I was expecting to see Shank run into my field of view and I would follow his lead, but nothing happened, he didn’t move. I even stopped looking at the potential threat from inside the residence to look at Shank to see why he wasn’t running into the doorway and as I looked towards him I was shot in my upper right leg, I did not know where the bullet came from and assumed that Domino had fired from inside the residence and the bullet had gone through the stucco wall prior to entering my leg. The gunshot did not seem loud at all and there wasn’t a great deal of pain but I could see that the wound was very serious. I remember thinking “dammit, not again” as I looked down as this was my first day back to work after being shot my Shank. The bullet entered my outer right thigh on the outer seam of my pants approximately five inches below my belt and exited on the inner seam approximately four inches down from the crease of my leg. I was positioned in a kneeling position with my right knee on the ground and my left leg flexed. I was facing the doorway and had my right outer thigh parallel with the side of the residence. As I was looking down I saw that I was bleeding very heavily from my upper inside thigh area and believed the round had struck my femoral artery as I could see my bright red blood spurting from the wound. I realized that this was a mortal injury if I was not lucky enough to get immediate first aid and no-one on the team was trained to deal with this type of injury. During my tenure on the streets of San Bernardino I had seen quite a few people die from an injury just like mine. I remembered a butcher in my home town had died from a slice to his femoral artery when he was chopping meat with a cleaver and had missed the counter and had sliced into his inner upper thigh and severed the artery. He had fallen down behind the counter and had not even been able to summon help and was discovered dead by a customer who saw him laying behind the counter in a pool of blood.

  I ran from the entrance and got down behind some concrete steps about twenty feet from the doorway to gain some cover from the front of the house. As I ran across and laid there I could hear several more shots being fired and I believed the team was in a gunfight with Domino. I also fired several rounds into the open doorway to hopefully keep Domino down as I was in a vulnerable position and didn’t want to get shot again. I tried to put pressure on the wound with my hands but couldn’t because they kept slipping in the blood. I noticed that the bullet had exited through one of the inner leg straps for my drop holster and I had made a large pool of blood on the ground. As I looked down my leg things started to slow down for me. Officer Beach and sergeant Lemos then came to my aid and I learned from sergeant Lemos that he had shot me. I still felt that this was a fatal wound and told officer Beach to tell my kids and my fiancée  Reyna that I loved them. I felt myself begin to lose consciousness and believe I blacked out. I remember being dragged out from the front yard and being dropped on the ground striking the back of my head on the concrete which revived me a little bit.

It wasn’t a bad feeling to slip away from consciousness. I didn’t feel cold or any pain and actually felt very peaceful with the entire situation. I can only liken it to the feeling that occurs just at the precise moment that you fall asleep. I have watched enough movies and believed that you felt uncontrollably cold but there wasn’t any sensation of pain or discomfort at all. I think I realized that my life was in the hands of everyone around me and if I was to survive I needed to try to stop myself from going into shock as I needed to keep my blood pressure as low as possible. I remembered how I had felt two weeks before and tried to stop myself from reacting in the same way.