[narrator] In Florida, officers are drawn into an ambush.
[officer 1 speaking]
[officer 2 speaking on radio]
[officer speaking]
[gunshots]
[narrator] And in Wisconsin, a traffic stop becomes a manhunt.
[officer speaking]
[female officer speaking]
[narrator] In Florida, 18 miles west of Tampa,
is St. Petersburg.
St Petersburg, it's a very diverse community and you have a lot to do there.
The county is the most densely populated county in the state of Florida.
So we got a lot of people
in a very small area because it's so nice.
But we do have a wide variety of criminal activity.
Criminal uses of firearms is a problem everywhere,
even though there's no information
that the person might be armed,
you're always thinking it's a possibility.
You're constantly thinking, "What if?"
[911 officer speaking]
[man speaking]
[siren blaring]
[officer speaking]
[officer speaking on radio]
[officer 1 speaking]
[officer 2 speaking]
It was around seven o'clock
and it was still daylight outside
for him to be breaking into cars when people are still up
and around is a little bit different.
[officer speaking on radio]
[Sgt. Jacob] Deputies are being dispatched to a burglary.
It's happening in progress.
It's a distance away from my area of responsibility,
but this is starting to spread out.
Maybe they could use some more resources.
[officer speaking on radio]
[Sgt. Jacob speaking]
[narrator] Corporal Nazir Amin's shift has just begun
when he joins the hunt.
As I'm pretty much driving to that area,
I see this subject acting a little bit, you know, out of order.
He's not really doing what normal people do.
At this time, we don't know the suspect's identity.
There is no information received about firearms.
That's definitely a concern anytime someone runs from us.
I hop out with the other deputy.
That's talking to the neighbor that had chased him.
[Cpl. Nazir speaking]
[officer speaking]
[Cpl. Nazir] I'm confirming that the subject that I saw
was the person that is in question.
When anyone's walking around with a backpack,
they're storing items.
One of the common trends is to break into vehicles looking for firearms.
So, seeing the backpack on him was definitely a little bit alarming.
The subject that I saw was running through the parking lot.
[officer speaking on radio]
[Cpl. Nazir speaking]
Cpl. Aitken was en route with his canine, Taco.
[Cpl. Aitken speaking]
I need to set up a perimeter unit.
We don't want to introduce ourselves or someone else into that area
to confuse the dog as that odor is fresh.
[indistinct chatter on radio]
Matt and I didn't have to really talk about a game plan.
My job as backup,
we worked together for a long time.
He's going to be watching his dog.
My job is to watch all the areas, all the danger points
that he's not going to be able to see.
We knew we were on him.
That kind of confirmed that we were in the right spot and the dog was locked in.
The dog wouldn't have fetched it up if it was old.
Working an area like that,
there's a lot of hiding points.
Very viney, there's a lot of downed branches.
It puts you on edge.
Every step you take, you're wondering,
"Am I missing something?
And can I see him before he sees us?"
There's no hiding that we're coming for him.
He's going to hear us tracking through.
He's going to hear the dog breathing heavy.
He's going to hear us knocking down bushes and walking through stuff
while he's bed up somewhere making a game plan.
[indistinct chatter on radio]
I almost said to him and suggested,
"Why don't we just go around?"
I noticed then that there is another fence over there.
So at that point, I scaled the fence and Matt had taken off
to continue to track, and I'm trying to catch up to him.
[gunshots]
[Sgt. Jacob] I see three shots and Matt fall to the ground.
I knew I had perimeter units out there.
They had to hear the gunshots.
I was trying to mike up, and I wasn't getting out.
He wasn't supposed to get hit.
Not with me, his backup.
No.
[gunshots]
[Sgt. Jacob] I couldn't get my gun out in time.
I know that the dog needed to be secured so that help can be rendered.
There was no other way around it.
I was very concerned for Matt's condition
because I knew he needed help right away.
So it's very frustrating.
The most I can do is to provide direction at that point.
We start to, just, running to the location.
[Taco barking]
We hear canine Taco barking.
[Cpl. Nazir] It's indescribable...
to see one of your own brothers in blue laying there on the ground.
All the emotions are kind of attacking you,
and you're doing the best to keep them at bay.
[Sgt. Jacob] I know he has body armor on.
But I didn't realize that none of the rounds
had touched any of his vest.
We needed to get somebody to Matt, now.
So at the time,
the the suspect is visibly deceased.
We went ahead and checked his pulse. He was pronounced deceased.
Corporal Aitken's bleeding profusely.
You want to do everything you can to bring them back.
[Cpl. Aitken] The first round hit my neck.
I heard it hit my neck.
It was a high pitched ping, almost the sound of like aluminum bat hitting a ball.
[gunshots]
[Cpl. Aitken] When that first happened, I immediately fell.
I knew I had been shot.
I was gonna bring my hands underneath me,
do a do a push up, get myself back up there.
[gunshots]
I tried to move my hands under my body
and my arms wouldn't move.
I couldn't feel anything.
I actually thought I got shot in the head.
I distinctly remember seeing black coming from the outside
and eventually closed in on me and I passed out.
I didn't hear the gunshot, the gunfight happening.
The rounds fractured C2, my second vertebrae.
It controls all your motor functions from your neck down.
The round itself did not hit my spinal cord,
but there is a shockwave behind that round.
The shockwave from a firearm
is just as dangerous as the projectile.
My body had to absorb all that energy,
and that's what made me drop,
and that's what made me paralyzed.
And it also caused my diaphragm to drop.
Our diaphragm is what controls our breathing.
And so, I wasn't breathing when I was hit.
I was shot in my neck.
I was shot in my wrist and it fractured my radius.
And I was shot in the leg as well through the muscle.
I didn't feel any of these rounds hit me.
I remember having a very real sensation of,
this is how I'm gonna die in this backyard, in St. Petersburg.
This is how it ends.
[Taco barking]
I hear Jake say, "Stay in the fight, Mattie, don't stop fighting."
And I remember hearing him say that.
I really feel like I clung on to those words
and forced my eyes open.
One of the other handlers, her name is Amanda Ettinger.
She wrote an ambulance with me and she saw that I need to start calming down.
She said, "I need you to look at me.
We're in combat, we're together."
And I felt like if I looked away from Amanda, she was to my left.
I felt like if I looked away from her and I looked to my right,
I would see the Reaper right next to me.
And that would be it.
I just stared at Amanda and we breathed together,
and I didn't stop moving my toes inside my boots
until I got to the ER because I was terrified
that if I stopped moving my feet, they would never move again.
[Cpl. Aitken] The deputies had responded to provide medical aid.
A lot of those guys are new.
They were newer deputies
and talking to all three of my doctors.
They are all very confident that if they did not provide
the CPR in the time that they did,
I would not have made it.
I just could not believe that the three of us survived this.
If Jake wasn't on this call, I don't think
this call would have worked out like it did.
I still had this feeling like I could have done better for him as backup.
[Cpl. Aitken] You know, Jake's wife depends on me to get him home,
and my wife depends on Jake to get me home.
I can't say enough about the guy.
For some reason, and I don't know why I did it this way,
I'll call it divine intervention.
Taco jumped the fence, I jumped the fence
and I took off on the track.
Hey, there's always at fences.
That's just something we know.
[Cpl. Aitken] I don't operate that way.
I can't explain why I did it different this way.
You know, I train ambushes.
I teach how to prevent ambushes.
I teach how to deal with an ambush once it happens.
We anticipate the suspect is going to shoot at the dog.
But watching the body camera, it was obvious
that the suspect wanted to kill me.
He didn't care about killing Taco.
[gunshots]
Before my brain even recognized that he had a gun in his hand,
I was already being hit and I was already on the ground.
I think if Jake was right up on me at the time
the shooting happened, Jake would've been shot as well.
And that separation between Jake and I probably saved my life.
[gunshots]
It all comes down to, he saw me and hurt me long before I saw him.
And I advanced on him and I paid for it.
[narrator] Zion Bostick is pronounced dead at the scene.
He had been arrested 18 times
for a total of 34 felonies and 22 misdemeanor charges.
Bostick was facing a five-year prison sentence at the time of this shooting.
To look back on and understand that I survived it...
is pretty remarkable.
[narrator] In Wisconsin, 60 miles west of Milwaukee,
is the city of Janesville.
I've been a police officer with the city of Janesville for just over three years.
We have a good relationship with the community
which helps us when we're doing our investigations.
Once you get past the city and get out into the county,
it's just, it's a different world.
It's relaxed, the people out there
are some of the nicest people that I've met.
Law enforcement, ever since I was younger
has always been a dream of mine.
I moved out here approximately seven years ago.
It's fun.
It's a lot of fun.
[Michael] That night, I was driving on the north side of Janesville.
I had heard other officers radioing out
a suspicious activity involving a BMW
that had a red trailer on it.
[man speaking indistinctly]
[Michael] I immediately recognize the subject to be Jesse Seales.
Jesse's fairly well known for his drug use
and drug activity that he's involved in
in the city of Janesville.
[car starts]
[Michael] By the time I was able to get to my squad car,
Jesse had already been quite a ways up the road.
But I was still able to see him.
Not stopping at the stop plates
and driving into oncoming traffic.
At that point, the pursuit was terminated due to the risk.
We already had information on who the driver was.
We could then use other investigative tools to find Jesse.
[Samantha] I was on routine patrol in a fully marked squad
approaching a traffic light at the intersection of Highway 26 and McCormick.
Our dispatch gave out that the Janesville Police Department
was chasing a vehicle.
I heard the description of the vehicle that it was a smaller vehicle
with a trailer attached to it, which kind of sticks out.
Usually suspects don't...
flee with vehicles that are attached to trailers.
I looked up in my rearview
and I see a vehicle that had a trailer attached to it,
approaching the intersection fast, coming towards me.
When I saw the vehicle go into oncoming traffic,
it's that shock.
Your hair kind of stands up on the back of your neck.
Does he want to get away?
Is he trying to hit somebody?
Being in a high speed pursuit, everything is fast forward.
Your thoughts, your emotions...
He was showing no regard for human life that night.
He did not care what happened to anybody on that road.
He just wanted to get away.
Vehicles were not moving out of my way,
which was causing more of a danger on the road.
My sergeant came over the radio
stating that they had identified the driver
and there was to terminate the pursuit.
Safety is a major, major factor
when it comes to pursuing a vehicle.
There was a big risk to the public.
When you stop chasing a car, you hope that that vehicle stops on its own.
But more times than not, they just continue to drive.
You hope that the dangerous driving stops.
[Samantha speaking]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[officer on radio]
[Samantha speaking]
All he had to do was turn north, and it would have been over.
I was expecting him to turn north.
I wanted him to turn north.
We knew who the driver was, so it was something,
well, we'll catch you later.
But he chose not to and he turned south
towards me into oncoming traffic.
I didn't really have time to think about me at that moment
when his vehicle was coming straight at my car.
You have a moment to react, and your reaction,
it needs to be the right one.
When he hit my squad,
it was kind of like hitting a brick wall, right?
Because I'm not going fast.
At the time that he struck me, from my squad video,
I believe I was going about 7 mph.
I was almost at a stop and he was...
he was well over 55 mph.
I'm not too big of a person to say that I was scared in that incident.
[loud boom]
I knew that there were Janesville officers very close in the area,
and I knew that he wasn't going to get far.
Then I see that there's that second individual in the car.
There was so much running through my head,
and you're kind of in a daze just by being in a crash
and then the crash and what it was and how it happened.
I kind of moved... Moved my hands, moved my feet.
I'm like, all right, I'm good.
There was a pain in my leg.
I didn't want to look at it.
I don't have time to kind of assess what that injury was,
refocused, but you just got to power through it,
just got to go through it.
[Sgt. Andrew] So on the night in question, I was responsible
for the southern portion of the county.
The moment I hear Deputy Valencia injured,
I request as many units as possible to go to the scene.
[Samantha] I saw the passenger reaching around on the floorboards.
He could be reaching for a weapon.
Especially at the degree of how this incident was happening
and where it was at, at that moment,
this could've gone very badly,
very, very badly.
The primary concern of mine is her ability to defend herself
against any suspect that might be unseen.
But getting her assistance as fast as possible is a priority.
[Samantha] While I was pointing my firearm at the vehicle,
at the passenger, giving commands, multiple agencies arrived.
Milton Police Department,
he ran across the median, got behind my squad, stood in front of me.
Janesville Police Department officer Erin Johnson,
she was the first that I recognized being on scene.
[Erin] She's still in her car.
[Samantha speaking]
[Erin speaking]
I was relieved.
I was happy that he was taken into custody.
[officer 1 speaking]
-[Samantha speaking] -[officer 1 speaking]
[Samantha speaking]
The crash was pretty severe.
It was a head on collision on a highway.
[officer 1 speaking]
[officer 2 speaking]
[Sgt. Andrew] Deputy Valencia, she was in good hands
with Sergeant Rowley and the Janesville Fire Department.
My job was to apprehend Jesse.
[officer speaking on radio]
[Sgt. Andrew speaking]
We were getting calls from some of the residents
in that subdivision that had either seen Jesse
or he was trying to get into their house.
And so I set up a command post in my squad there.
[officer 1 speaking on radio]
[officer 2 speaking on radio]
[Sgt. Andrew] The subdivision where Jesse fled into,
what made it different was
it's not connected directly to the city.
You have to get on a township road or a highway
to come out of that subdivision.
So it made this subdivision very easy to set up a perimeter on.
At this point in the incident,
it has gone on for about two hours
and I have 20 officers who are still looking for him.
[officer speaking on radio]
[Sgt. Andrew] The perimeter slowly starts to collapse
toward his last reported location.
From experience, suspects usually hide, they don't run.
[dog barks]
[Sgt. Andrew] We've also elicited the assistance of the public,
letting them know what we're doing so that they can call 911
if they see anything that would help us.
[woman speaking]
[officer speaking]
[officer speaking on radio]
[Sgt. Andrew] There was a call that someone was
trying to come in the back door of a residence.
If he's willing to go inside of a residence that's occupied,
there's no one knowing what he's willing to do.
I drove to that location.
I was pretty confident that he was still nearby.
I just didn't locate him.
I began to walk back toward my squad.
It was a pretty tense situation
because I was the only unit on scene.
I have to opt for my firearm and assume that
deadly force is going to be used against me by Jesse.
[speaking indistinctly]
[Jesse speaking]
[officer speaking]
[Jesse speaking]
[officer speaking]
[Jesse speaking]
[officer speaking]
[Sgt. Andrew] Even though Jesse has so many officers with him,
there's no assurance that he doesn't have
a firearm or a weapon on him
that can endanger any of the officers.
[dog barking]
[dog continues barking]
[indistinct radio chatter]
-[Jesse speaking] -[officer speaking]
[Jesse speaking]
[Sgt. Andrew] Jesse Seales was convicted of first degree
endangering safety, fleeing an officer, causing injury
and operating a motor vehicle while under the influence.
He was sentenced to three years in Wisconsin state prison
and three years extended supervision.
The passenger was released from custody without charge.
[Samantha] I'm really lucky after being in that crash.
Honestly, that crash could have ended my life.
It could have ended my career.
[loud boom]
The injuries I sustained were very minor cuts, scrapes, bruises.
Knowing that Seales was intoxicated
at the time of this incident,
a lot of people were lucky that night.
The vehicles that were swerving out of his way
while he was in those wrong lanes of traffic.
They're lucky.
Every scenario that I play in my head, I'm hitting that car.
He wouldn't have stopped.
He would not have stopped that night until he was taken into custody.
[loud boom]
[Sgt. Andrew] I was ecstatic to get Jesse into custody
after having something like this happen
to someone that we worked with,
someone that we see every day.
It was closure to an incident
that happened to all of us, not just Deputy Valencia.
[dog barking]
I'll never know why Seales decided to strike my squad.
I'm lucky that I only received minor injuries from the incident,
but it changes you as a person, you know,
going through something like that is...
it's alarming, and it's something where you just,
you kind of, you'll heal eventually.
It's that hard realization of,
you know, this isn't... this isn't a game.
This is real.
When you get into this career, the probability of you being injured,
it's pretty high.
-[indistinct chatter] -[dog barking]
There are bad individuals out there.
If they weren't out there, you wouldn't have law enforcement.
[officer] Watch your head.
[narrator] In Vermont...
I thought I was going to die.
[narrator] In Wisconsin...
This is the first time I've ever been in a police chase.
[narrastor] ...and in Indiana.
♪