In Ohio...
It just feels like this is gonna go bad quickly.
Then, in Georgia...
Routine patrol...
It went from 0 to 100.
...turns deadly.
My main focus was just hopefully stay alive.
And the suspect is on the loose.
Yeah, drop it, come outside!
In Ohio,
15 miles north of Cincinnati,
is the city of Springdale.
Springdale has a lot of retail.
We don’t have a very large residential population
compared to a larger city,
but the retail brings people in from outside.
When you hear a person with a knife, you just never know.
It could be a hostage situation.
We’ve always got to be prepared for the worst.
I was already out on patrol.
I could hear different officers come up on the radio saying,
"I’m here. I’m responding."
That allows me as the commander to know who is going to be there.
It helps me to focus on what we need to do when we get there.
The store worker comes out, she goes,
"We got everyone out. The store is evacuated."
So that was phenomenal.
It was time to go in and see what we had on our hands.
Call 8 Paul 81 on premises, making entry.
We go in as four officers,
and we start making our way through the store.
We had officers with handguns out.
We also had an officer with a taser out.
It was very eerie.
It was quiet. Nobody was there.
It felt wrong.
Why isn’t this place filled with customers?
Why don’t you hear messages on an intercom?
You’re walking through this eerie silence
just waiting
to see what is gonna be there.
It’s like you’re waiting in a scary movie to get that scare.
We didn’t know where the suspect was.
We knew where he last seen.
He can move anywhere in a store,
and it’s a very large store.
We’ve got to go there tactically.
Every single aisle is a hard corner, as we call it.
That’s an area where a person could hide.
We don’t know the intentions of the suspect.
We don’t know if he’s here to hurt one of us.
We don’t know if he wants us to hurt him.
So as we go through there, we have to go nice and slow.
And we have to look at those corners because we can’t be surprised.
Because surprise is not a good situation for us or the suspect.
We hear a noise to our left.
So two of us kind of diverted to see what that was.
It was very difficult to assess.
All I have is sound and until I can see
what made that sound, I can’t really react.
I take the corner and I see the suspect.
I notice he’s looking down, he’s got a knife in his hand.
He just looked...
He looked defeated.
He’s not responding to demands.
He just stares, almost blankly.
Like that 1,000-yard stare you hear about.
He stands up.
He grabs a little can of propane.
Now he’s got the propane in one hand and a knife in the other.
It just feels like this is gonna go bad quickly.
It felt like he wanted us to do something.
What we call suicide by cop.
That he wanted to put us in a situation we were forced to shoot him.
Just to watch him physically grab the wires and yank them off,
like it was nothing, was shocking to us.
When he was tased, he dropped the cannister that he had
but he did not drop the knife.
He grabs the gas can again.
We can take two shots with our taser.
So again Officer Grindle hits him.
But again, he’s shaking it off like it was nothing.
I thought, "We’re gonna have to shoot him."
We are gonna have to shoot him if he takes one more step.
We don’t want to hurt anybody.
Our job as police officers is to save lives.
We wanna help in this situation.
Unfortunately, he was making it difficult to do that.
If this guy were to just lunge at the officers they would have to shoot him.
I had to think about some command decisions regarding what’s next.
The officers have tried to use their less-lethal, their taser, with no effect.
In a situation like where, uh, a deadly weapon is involved
we might have to engage deadly force.
SWAT was dispatched.
In the academy, they teach you 21 steps.
If somebody has a knife out,
and your gun is holstered,
it’s impossible for you to get out and fire a shot
if someone is within 21 steps of you.
We did have our guns out, so we had a little space that we could give up.
People don’t realize that our vest will not stop a knife.
If someone has a knife and they stab me, it’s going through.
How much leeway are we gonna give him to try and talk to him
and give him a chance to drop that knife,
before he forces our hand?
We could kinda guess he maybe had a mental health issue,
but we didn’t know that for 100%.
A lot of our calls might not be categorized as a mental health call,
but once you get there, you find out that it is.
I have a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
But I also teach crisis intervention for our county.
I have no idea what I can do to help, but I gotta be there
because I know these guys, I know the fear in their voice.
I immediately run into the building.
But yet, there’s dead silence in store, other than just Erik Langevin talking.
Langevin is doing a fantastic job.
But from my point of view and my experience,
I was worried about Erik because it is just so mentally exhausting
to stay with somebody with the adrenaline pumping and anxiety,
and there’s just a lot going on.
I didn’t introduce myself as officer, detective, it’s Erik.
’Cause I wanna be on a personal level.
It’s very important when you deal with anybody
to establish a good rapport, especially in a crisis situation.
You want that person to be able to trust you.
You don’t have to have a perfect script of what you’re gonna say,
he just talked, he just let him know he cared.
We’re here to help you, let us help you.
When I got his name,
I felt like I had a giant smile on my face.
I know I didn’t.
But inside I was cheering.
Because I thought, "Okay. We can do this."
Now he’s not just any person, he’s Landen.
He knows my name, I know his name.
I wanna connect on that personal level.
I want to remind him that he’s a person that’s worth saving
before our SWAT come on the scene and take over.
He just continued to keep talking to him.
Erik had been talking to him for almost half an hour.
We did talk, should we switch somebody out?
Just to give him a mental break.
But we made the choice just to keep him going.
It’s really physically draining to be in this situation for that long.
But I’ve got to keep him focused on me.
I just literally kept waiting for him to just either cut his neck, cut his wrists,
or something because he would just not let go of this knife.
There was points in the situation
where the knife would become looser in his hand.
But then he would motivate himself by taking the taser barb
and rubbing his chest, and he would tighten his grip again.
It’s like pumping yourself up to do something.
Like an MMA fighter or a boxer
pumping themselves up before a fight.
To me, Landen was doing this.
He was preparing himself for a fight.
He was mentally preparing himself to come forward and force our hand.
I just have to slow the situation down.
And get Landen back focused on me, not on the pain.
And I knew it wasn’t just gonna be a dropping of the knife.
It was gonna have to be baby steps.
We’ve already asked him to drop the knife, he’s not gonna do it.
So now my focus was the gas can.
If I can get him to drop the gas can,
then I know I have him mentally going in the right direction.
When he drops that gas can that’s huge for me.
We’re getting one more step closer to a peaceful resolution.
It tells me we’re on the right path.
He’s dropped the can.
He’s not charging towards us.
We’re gonna get him to drop the knife.
I felt like he was there.
He was mentally ready to drop the knife,
he just wasn’t letting himself do it.
When SWAT walks in, to me that changed everything.
We had this situation calm.
But you bring SWAT in and you’re thinking,
"Okay, is this gonna help?
"Or is this gonna hurt?"
SWAT was gonna come in and take over the scene
and deal with the subject ’cause that’s what SWAT does.
I didn’t want that to happen yet.
Erik’s rapport was getting better.
My worry is that Landen sees them as a threat.
So now this might push him forward
and to charge and have a knife and now we’re forced to do something.
Once he was in custody,
my job’s done. The SWAT team can take over.
I’m still in that mindset now where I’m still going.
Was over an hour, but in my mind,
the time, it felt like it was no time at all.
I’m happy that the knife’s dropped,
but that adrenal dump happens, and I’m just...
I’ve gotta get away.
I didn’t wanna be near anybody.
I just needed a moment to myself.
Kind of dropped my knee,
and just kind of said a quick prayer.
Just needed time away just to just relax.
Landen is charged with one count of inducing panic
and two counts of aggravated menace.
The court finds him incompetent to stand trial
and orders he receive treatment.
We really didn’t want to punish Landen, like he was a criminal.
We knew Landen needed help.
We did that situation right.
We handled that right.
And for Landen, he’s alive,
and he’s doing okay.
And his family who adores him, they still have him.
And we were able to get him the help he needed.
Just almost there. There you go, bud.
There you go.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is now using the body cam
in their police academies to teach de-escalation.
So it’s neat to think something we did,
in our little town, is being shown across the country
for tips on how to handle a situation like that.
We’re there to help people...
...make a difference...
...serve the community.
And I think that day we did a great job.
In Georgia,
17 miles south of Atlanta
is the city of Fairburn.
It’s the 2019 Super Bowl weekend,
and the game is being held in the nearby state capital.
Fairburn PD’s Corporal Krystal Wilborn
has signed up for an extra shift to help with the influx of visitors.
When you have, uh, big events like the Super Bowl,
it effects not only Atlanta, but it effects the surrounding cities
because people travel all around to come attend these events.
But the criminals are also getting prepared,
literally getting prepared for the crowd that comes.
We started at00 p. m.
And our goal was the hotels.
Our job was just to patrol, patrol, patrol,
and, uh, look for anything suspicious
to make sure that no one is breaking into these people’s cars.
The hotels are packed.
And as I’m driving, I see a burgundy F-250.
And I see condensation that’s coming out of the pipe,
so I knew that the vehicle was turned on.
I just wanted to see what was going on
and to make contact with the vehicle.
I park forward, and I approached the vehicle.
As I approached, I smell a strong smell of marijuana.
And I seen that there was one male occupying the vehicle,
and he was asleep.
I realized it was a temporary tag out of Tennessee.
I called Officer Sims for backup.
I did not wanna disturb the gentleman,
especially with the smell of marijuana.
I figured that he had a large amount due to the strong smell,
and I am a female.
That is a male inside of the vehicle.
So no matter how strong I am,
anything could happen.
Well, nothing came up,
but I wasn’t too surprised.
It could’ve been just a system error.
Um, it could’ve been a brand new vehicle.
The most that I was expecting maybe to detain
find out who this person is, where he’s supposed to go,
and that’s what I was hoping.
But you just never know how things are gonna turn out.
New recruit Officer Levar Sims...
...arrives on scene.
I was training Officer Sims at the time.
He had transitioned from being a firefighter.
He was a good recruit.
He literally did not cause me any problems.
Uh, he’s very coachable.
Um, he’s teachable.
Um, and he was smart.
And that particular day was his first day out on his own.
And he was doing well.
Officer Sims flashed his flashlight
inside of the vehicle,
and that woke the gentleman up immediately.
He was shocked because he’s just waking up,
and now, you’ve got two cops.
We were both kind of talking to him.
We was asking him, you know, "Hey, how are you? We’re just checking on you."
Um, not letting him know that we smelled the smell of marijuana
so maybe he wouldn’t freak out.
If you don’t have a reason to be here,
then you’re loitering
’cause you can’t just sleep here.
So I was just trying to identify him, who he was
and what was his reason for being at the hotel.
-Okay.
When someone’s not answering questions like that,
it do raise a sense of something’s not right.
He began to reach from the front to the back from the front to the back.
He got drugs in the car.
Where there’s drugs most of the time there’s guns.
He’s definitely acting suspicious.
He could’ve had a legitimate reason to reach back there,
but only he knows where everything is situated in the vehicle.
The fact that I couldn’t see...
He couldn’t answer any questions.
So I just didn’t want him reaching back there at all
’cause I don’t know what’s the next thing he’s gonna pull out.
The gentleman jumped out of the truck,
so I kind of stepped back to give the guy some room
and then that way I can see his hands.
I knew then that something’s about to go down.
Once he stepped out,
Officer Sims went around the front of the vehicle
to try to make it to me.
It went from 0 to 100.
Very quickly he opened that back door in my face,
jumped back into the driver’s seat, and put it in reverse.
I jump in the rear driver’s side,
and I got him in a head lock trying to embolize him.
Sims actually got into the passenger side.
I was just more afraid for Sims ’cause he swings that truck so hard.
I see the passenger door just fold
until 180 degree.
So I’m thinking either Sims got thrown out originally,
or he was crushed.
But I looked directly into the driver’s side window,
and Sims still was giving a fight.
That vehicle is now a lethal weapon.
And I would be very justified for shooting.
But at the time, I was carrying a .45,
and those bullets are huge.
It wouldn’t went through the metal of that truck,
probably went through his body,
and maybe could’ve hit Sims, and I didn’t wanna do that.
When he hit that speed bump, it kind of threw Sims off balance,
and he fell out.
And when he fell out, he still was in line of that rear tire of F-250,
and it ran over his abdomen.
I immediately call for backup,
and then I literally asked Sims,
"What do you want me to do?"
Because I didn’t wanna go chase after the vehicle
and leave him there ’cause nobody else was around.
That feeling of just been helpless is just,
it’s really a horrible feeling.
The call comes out over the radio,
and it was time to go.
When I heard it was Sims, I was like...
My heart just sank
because I knew that this was his first night out on his own.
The suspect left on the Highway 74
and was heading eastbound.
Where he was at, there was only a few streets
that he could’ve turned off from.
So we had officers checking every off street.
He was just in a whole lot of pain,
a whole lot of pain.
I didn’t see any blood,
but he possibly could be internally bleeding
’cause crush ribs could’ve puncture lungs.
He could drown in his own blood.
Everything is going through my head.
But my main focus was just him and just keeping him conscious
and hopefully he stays alive.
From the traffic that was coming over the radio,
I understood that he’d been run over by a vehicle.
I know that’s serious injury.
So in the back of my mind, I have a lot of concern for him.
The only thing really going through my mind was
"Is Sims okay?" and "Where am I gonna find this guy?"
You just click into your training mode, your police mode,
and you just do what’s gotta be done.
Another officer who was on shift
located a vehicle matching the description,
so we immediately responded to the area where he was at to help him.
My heartrate tripled.
It was... The amount of adrenaline...
It was unreal, the feeling.
But upon us arriving to where the truck was,
we determined that it was not the suspect, was not the right vehicle,
similar but not the right one.
And the driver was a Caucasian male
which didn’t match the description.
Just ’cause found the wrong truck doesn’t mean we gotta stop looking.
It’s a lot of pressure because you’re on a time crunch at this point.
There’s a good possibility that he’s already gone.
But you have a sense of duty to bring justice
to this officer who’s severally injured.
Paramedics are now on scene at the Holiday Inn.
Once EMT and the damlissic get there,
I have already removed his vest.
They ended up cutting his pants.
And they put him on the board, and put him on the bed, and they loaded him up.
After Sims left and went to the hospital, it kind of gave me a relief.
But I still was kind of on edge only because...
...he was alive when he left me.
I don’t know if he’s gonna survive the injuries.
On the streets of Fairburn...
...officers continue the search.
You can get a long way at night
driving in 20 minutes.
So I knew there was a chance that he’s gone now.
But the truck had a Tennessee temporary tag on it.
That gave some hope that he has no clue where he’s at.
He’s probably gonna hide and try to call somebody.
If we’re gonna find him, it’s not because we got there fast
because the time had already elapsed.
So we kind of slowed it a little bit just to do a more thorough search.
My first instinct was I’ve gotta get up to where he’s at.
He saw me almost immediately
and takes off down the road,
so I take off after him as quick as I possibly can.
He made a left in a yard
and drove through the woods.
We start scouring, looking. Where could it’ve gone?
And that’s when we realized that there’s a trail that lead into the woods.
Running through those woods,
everything runs through your mind anything that could happen.
Is that dude’s gonna come from my left, come from my right?
He abandoned the truck, and he’s standing in the woods waiting to shoot us.
The guy, he’s already done some pretty heinous acts.
You gotta be prepared for anything.
It was muddy.
And I began to see trails of tire tracks leading away from the wood line.
The truck had made it through.
And, um, emptied out onto the main highway.
It’s a plethora of roads that he could’ve chosen to go down.
The more hands on deck, it really helps.
We passed the information onto our surrounding agencies
to help try to locate this guy.
20 minutes later, officers from neighboring Tyrone PD
get a lead on the suspect’s truck.
When we received the information
that Tyrone police had located the vehicle,
way off the beaten path,
we were real excited
because no longer are we having to chase down a vehicle.
This guy’s on foot.
If we establish a perimeter around this guy,
and we get him cornered in,
there’s a good possibility we’re gonna catch him.
The dogs, they’ve got a good hit.
So we just start following the dogs.
We went down roads, behind houses, through sheds,
and eventually took off where the trail ended.
It was very frustrating.
We knew that there was only one way he could’ve gone out of there.
It was probably by vehicle.
He probably up and left the state.
The search isn’t over.
Investigators identify the suspect
as 33 year old Taurean McShan.
He is wanted for drug-related charges
in his home state of Tennessee.
Three days later, US Marshals locate McShan in Memphis and arrest him.
He is currently awaiting trial on charges
including hit and run, aggravated assault, and reckless driving.
After undergoing emergency surgery
for a fractured spine and lacerated liver,
Officer Sims recovers.
He retires from policing.
I knew it was only a matter of time before he was caught.
Then when we get word that he had been apprehended and was taken into custody,
man, that was like a weight lifted off your shoulders.
I visit Officer Sims frequently.
I didn’t miss too many days that he was up in the hospital.
I think he’s very lucky to be alive.
It’s definitely a learning experience
where if it happens or a similar situation happened again,
um, what would you do?
It’s amazing that he lived through it.
He had really the capabilities to be a great police officer.
He was a blast to work with.
And we miss him up here.