mike

Former Edina Minnesota Police Officer
Shot: November 16 2000
Edina Minnesota

The second car I saw had no license plates and was facing out

Mike: "I was on my way to an ice rescue drill when the dispatcher said there was a bank robbery in progress. The caller was using a cell phone in a back office where he was watching the robbery. He said the robber was a lone male and had a hand gun. The bank is on France Avenue, someone who was robbing a bank would not want to cross France Avenue, which has six lanes of traffic. I figured the suspect would want to be out of sight of the bank when he parked so I went to a lot about a block from the bank. The second car I saw had no license plates and was facing out. I figured that was the vehicle. As I found it the dispatcher relayed the information that the suspect was going out the back door of the bank. At that point I just started to back up from the suspect's vehicle. I thought I'd hide a few rows from the vehicle and wait for a second squad to arrive.

He rotated up an assault rifle from underneath a long coat

"As I was backing up the suspect stood up from between a couple of parked cars where he had evidently been hiding, so there was more delay in the relay from the dispatcher than I figured. The minute he popped up and I turned my head to look at him he rotated up an assault rifle from underneath a long coat where he had it slung and he squeezed the first round from his waist, it was within a matter of a second and a half. The first round went through my passenger side window and through my hip. I realized that with the assault rifle, the big banana clip, and forty rounds, he wasn't going to miss me, and I would be dead if I stayed in the car. So I got out and started to run behind my vehicle. There was an adrenalin surge and a lot of pain. I circled to the back and he circled to the front spraying rounds at me through the vehicle as I was running. I was just about to the end of the parking lot where there was a small berm and a row of bushes. I was going to try to get behind that. I was just about there when he hit me again.

Whoever gave up died

"I believe eighteen rounds went through my squad and one of them went through my back windshield and hit my legs. I found out later he used cop killer bullets that shatter on impact. It took out both bones in my lower leg and I fell forward, face first and hit my right shoulder. In the right shoulder there is a nerve complex that was struck as I fell, I couldn't move my right hand so I couldn't get to my gun. I figured I'd better play dead. As I was lying on the ground twenty feet away motionless, the perpetrator walked to the back of the squad and put two more rounds in my lower back. He got in his vehicle and drove away. I had a thought from my police training, they said that whoever gave up died. I was thinking I have to stay alive. I was shot four times, in my hip, my leg, and two more times in my back. Before the ambulance arrived a female rookie officer gave me oxygen and put her hand in my wound to stop the bleeding. I only had twenty-nine days to go before I retired.

There is no need for assault rifles in the public

"He was killed a short while later in a shoot-out with two officers. He had seven more guns, plus a couple thousand rounds of ammunition. There is no need for assault rifles in the public: the small caliber, high speed weapon that puts out forty rounds, there is no need for period. I don't think those should be sold through guns stores unless it's a police organization buying them. There are a lot of places where there's less violence, and a lot of the reason is because they don't have the number of guns we have. There are probably too many guns out there and I know we can't keep them away from the bad guys."