[narrator] In Texas...
...officers race to a bank robbery.
Stopped my car at about 20 yards off of his truck.
[gunshots]
[Officer Clint Brandon]
[dispatcher over radio]
The suspect just tried to murder me at 9:00 in the morning.
[gunshots]
There’s about 100 witnesses standing around.
[narrator] In the city of Indio, California...
...a routine callout...
Dispatch radioed and said there was a welfare check
of a male at an apartment complex.
[knocking on door]
[explosion]
[Division Fire Chief Mark Oakley] I couldn’t even see his feet.
He was engulfed in flames.
[narrator] And...
...in Georgia, a crash victim fights for his life.
[defibrillator] Shock delivered.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[officer] Put your hands up and come outside!
[narrator] Just South of Waco, Texas...
...is the city of Hewitt.
[Brandon] February 5, 2019 was a Tuesday.
And about 9:00 that morning...
[dispatcher]
[caller]
Dispatch put out the call over the radio of a possible robbery in progress
at Point West Bank on 420 North Hewitt Drive,
which was less than a block away from where I was at.
[narrator] During the robbery,
the masked robber forces the bank clerk to fill his bag with cash...
...at gunpoint.
[Brandon] Yeah, I pulled into the back of the bank through the drive-through teller area.
I could see a pickup backed in right by the front door in a handicapped spot.
Stopped my car at about 20 yards off of his truck.
[Brandon]
[dispatcher]
[Brandon] And, uh, a hooded subject running out of the front of the bank.
Drew my weapon on him and ordered him to show me his hands,
and that was when he opened fire with a semiautomatic .22 rifle.
[gunshots] He ended up firing between six and ten rounds.
[gunshots]
I immediately returned fire on him.
[gunshots]
This is the first time I’ve ever fired my weapon in the line of duty.
I ended up getting pinned behind my car,
and that was when his rifle jammed on him
and he got back in the truck and took off,
and that was when the pursuit started.
You have an individual encountering a police officer in full uniform,
driving a marked police car, with no question as to who he is,
-fires a weapon at that officer. -[gunshots]
This individual displayed some of the most evilness
that I’ve seen in this business.
Had no care for humanity whatsoever.
As we’re pulling out of the parking lot, we just miss an 18-wheeler...
[horn blares]
...that’s headed Northbound on Hewitt drive.
-[dispatcher] -[siren blares]
[Brandon] At 9:00 in the morning on a, on a weekday
is a pretty busy time for the City of Hewitt.
To avoid all the other traffic, he’s running down the center turn lane.
[Brandon]
[dispatcher]
[siren blares]
[Brandon] And, uh, we made it about a block or two down the road
before he stops in the middle of the road.
[Brandon]
[gunshots]
[Brandon]
[dispatcher]
As he’s stopping, I’m trying to give out a description of his license plate.
And by the time I realized what he’s doing, he’s already out of the car,
he’s got a shotgun in his hand, and he’s shooting into my windshield.
[gunshots, siren blares]
I can hear him firing the weapon,
I can hear the rounds hitting the windshield.
I can hear him working the slide on the shotgun.
That’s how I knew it was a pump-action,
I could actually hear him working the action on it.
To realize that those are real bullets coming at you,
and it’s really somebody trying to kill you...
I could hear the thwack of every round hitting the windshield.
[gunshots]
One shot right down the driver side door,
hit my spotlight, hit my rearview mirror.
Uh, one shot went right over my head. Uh,
hit my light bar, sent a few rounds a couple of inches over the top of my head.
Uh, one round hit the dash camera and destroyed it.
One hit my onboard computer and destroyed it.
One hit my radar and destroyed it.
And that’s also the round that hit me.
I got hit twice by buckshot while I was in the car.
[gunshot]
They say you just kind of go to a different place, and...
...fall back on your training and do what you have to do to stay alive.
I’m bleeding and I’ve been hit.
We’re in the middle of traffic, so I can’t really shoot back.
I’d risk hitting somebody else.
My really only option at that point was to put my vehicle into reverse
and try and put some distance between us,
and make myself a harder target to hit.
[dispatcher]
[Brandon]
I immediately knew I was hit in the shoulder.
I could feel it and I looked down. I could see blood,
but I could see that it wasn’t gushing blood, so I knew an artery wasn’t hit.
And my arm still worked, so I knew a bone wasn’t broken.
At that point, I didn’t really see any reason to stop chasing him.
And then I started giving information on the pursuit again.
And that was the point when Sergeant Sprung and Officer Wood showed up on scene.
I was dealing with a massive adrenaline dump.
Three or four rounds went within a few inches of my head.
A suspect just tried to murder me at 9:00 in the morning
in the middle of Hewitt Drive with about 100 witnesses standing around.
Um, rather than panicking, it just kinda made me more hyper-focused on him
and kind of ignoring everything else going on around me.
I just wanted to keep chasing that guy ’til I caught him.
The pursuit got going. We started picking up speed.
I got a lot of wind noise coming through the vehicle from all the bullet holes.
The back windshield had been completely blown out,
because some rounds went all the way through the car.
Starts making it very hard for me to hear anything over my radio.
[Sergeant Sprung]
[Brandon]
Sergeant ended up getting behind me,
and was trying to get me to get out of the pursuit.
He was telling me to pull over.
And it took a minute for it to register that he was talking to me.
I could hear chatter on the radio.
But I couldn’t make out what it was.
Officer Brandon showed extreme poise.
The way he handled that situation was second to none.
[gunshots]
The damage to that vehicle, it... It looked like it had been in a war.
Not knowing the extent of his injuries,
we had to make sure that he was gonna be in good condition.
So we needed to get him to medical help.
Catching bad guys like that is why people become cops.
And he’s probably one of the worst people I’ve ever come across in my career,
and now, I’m being told that I can’t chase him anymore.
That was pretty painful to hear.
[Brandon]
[dispatcher over radio]
[Brandon] Pulled over onto the shoulder.
Got my trauma kit out, took my outer carrier vest off, laid it on the hood,
and then started administering some first aid to myself where I had been shot.
Just a few seconds after that was when some other units started showing up on scene.
[officer]
[Brandon] They put me in the truck and drove me to the hospital.
[officer]
[officer] Okay, Edward, we’re coming up on him
but we’re not gonna be able to catch up with him immediately.
[dispatcher] Texas Patrol is negative.
[officer]
Being dispatched.
There’s a mix of emotions that are... That are going on.
We weren’t too far behind, uh, Sergeant Sprung and the suspect.
I know Officer Brandon. We went through the police academy together.
Our mind is focused on ensuring the safety of the public.
Stay calm, and, and get your job done,
in making sure that suspect is in our custody.
As we approached, uh, Highway Six,
it, it got a little busy.
[officer] Chad, do you say we just roll in there and take him?
[Officer Woods]
[dispatcher over radio]
[Woods] Shortly after going underneath the interstate...
[officer]
[Woods] ...he hit a wooden fence, and he wrecked out.
Suspect’s vehicle was inside of a fence.
He had taken out one side of the fence on the right side of the roadway,
crossed over the street, and took out another fence.
And that’s where he came to a stop.
Sergeant Sprung, he was our number one vehicle.
He was stopped.
Uh, myself and Officer Nines, we were number two.
And we positioned our vehicle
to somewhat block the roadway from where we just came from.
When he got out of the truck, I had my rifle.
Pulled my rifle up, and I remember looking through my scope and looking at him.
[sirens]
[Woods] And the suspect got his rifle and got the backpack,
he took off down, I don’t remember what street it was.
I remember Sergeant Sprung getting in a position where he could see him.
Which we were all trying to do.
At that point, we lost sight of him.
So we all held our positions until we can get more units in the area.
[officer]
[Woods]
[officer]
[Woods]
We didn’t know what he was doing.
We didn’t know if he was going into somebody’s back yard,
or to somebody’s house to hold up a position,
or if he had that shotgun somewhere in somebody’s fence line, pointed at us.
[officer]
[Woods]
When I arrived on scene, we began to coordinate a perimeter.
[Woods]
[Devlin]
[Woods]
[officer]
[officer over radio]
[Devlin] My officers have seen this person.
So now, we have good visual identification of who this person is.
[officer]
[officer over radio]
So we begin to formulate a game plan and set up a perimeter.
We don’t wanna rush the situation,
’cause we wanna get a coordinated effort
surrounding the immediate area.
Let’s not go in right away guns a-blazin’.
It’s more of a back-off.
This isn’t our area, so I don’t know where to send people in this neighborhood.
[indistinct chatter]
But it’s a Waco PD neighborhood.
They know where to send people.
[narrator] Waco PD units begin to systematically comb the local neighborhood
for any signs of the suspect.
[Waco officer]
[Devlin] We don’t need to go in and get ambushed.
[officer]
[Woods]
[Devlin] And then we begin to move in.
And we’ll utilize K9s or we’ll utilize the helicopter,
we’ll start to try to flush this individual out.
[dispatcher]
[Waco officer]
[dispatcher over radio]
[officer over radio]
Most suspects can’t sit for very long.
They don’t wanna sit for very long, because they wanna get moving.
And ultimately, he came out and attempted just to walk down the street,
when he was physically grabbed by a couple very, uh, keen, astute officers from Waco PD.
[Waco officer]
You know, ’cause he’s bloodied from the accident.
It doesn’t fit. It’s not as if he’s walking in the neighborhood.
He sticks out like a sore thumb.
And they just, they automatically take him into custody.
[narrator] The suspect had hidden the bag of money and shotgun behind a building,
then attempted to walk out of the area
through police lines as an innocent bystander.
[Woods] Had this gone any other way,
I believe that there could have been more damage done.
You know, more civilians hurt, officers hurt.
[Woods]
[dispatcher over radio] Copy. Yeah, re-identify...
[officer]
[Woods]
[Woods] It coulda turned out a lot worse than, than it actually did.
Look, we got a .32 caliber buckshot pellet still in my shoulder right now.
I can feel it pretty much every day.
Uh, as far as the round, it hit me in the vest, my vest stopped that,
so I didn’t get any damage from that.
And then basically, my right arm was, uh,
completely shredded from the glass that was in it.
And I had some bits of glass in my face, as well.
[narrator] The suspect is Dallas Bohanon.
[Devlin] He confessed to three bank robberies.
He was sentenced to three life sentences.
I had been in some adrenaline-pumping situations before,
but none quite like this.
[gunshots, siren blares]
In the immediate aftermath, before I was able to go back onto patrol,
I had to go sit with the psychiatrist for a little bit. Uh, that...
That meeting took about 10, 15 minutes before he cleared me to go back to work.
Just determined that I wasn’t suffering any PTSD or anything like that from it.
Which I wasn’t.
[Devlin] Bohannon had no empathy during his sentencing.
Uh, just didn’t seem to care.
And that to me makes a dangerous individual.
So Bohanon got exactly what he deserved.
[narrator] 20 miles East of Palm Springs,
in the middle of the California desert,
is the City of Indio.
Officer Nathan Quintana of the Indio Police Department is on patrol.
His partner, 25-year-old trainee Israel Campoa,
has been on the force for just three weeks.
[Officer Nathan Quintana] We were towards the end of our shift.
It’s August.
It was probably about 100, 110 degrees out that day.
[narrator] At 3:25, an Indio Police Department dispatcher takes a call.
[dispatcher over phone]
[caller over phone]
[dispatcher]
[caller]
[dispatcher]
[caller]
[dispatcher]
[caller]
[dispatcher] Okay.
[Quintana] Dispatch radioed and said there was a welfare check
of a male at a apartment complex.
Take a right right here.
[Quintana] I recognized the address and the, uh, the name in the call.
I’ve had past contacts with this gentleman before.
He gets agitated easily, and he gets really loud and aggressive.
It heightens your senses.
We park down the street.
We start walking up to the apartment complex.
[Quintana]
[Campoa]
[Quintana]
[bystander]
[Quintana]
[caller]
[Campoa]
[caller]
[Campoa]
[caller]
[Campoa]
[caller]
-[Campoa] -[caller]
[Campoa]
[Quintana] The manager of the apartment complex tells us that the day before,
he had thrown his, uh, stove out of the front door,
um, which is a gas stove.
She said that she believes he has turned on the gas today,
and he has access to turn the gas on and off
from the valve that comes out of the wall.
My first thought was, we need to get this person out
before something bad happens.
[Quintana] I was concerned about if there’s a gas leak and it’s big enough,
and it ignites, it’s gonna create a big fireball.
[Oakley] I was in my office when the call came out.
We were dispatched to a possible structure fire.
Proceed with caution.
I’m about three miles from where the call came from.
I could see that there’s no fire, there’s no smoke,
I don’t see anything in that vicinity.
As I’m getting closer, I’m talking to my dispatch,
are you receiving any additional 911 calls, they’re saying, no, uh,
possible gas leak, uh, reported by another 911 call, but nothing about fire.
[Quintana]
[maintenance man]
[Quintana]
I requested the, uh, maintenance man to come over to, to help us out.
[caller]
[Campoa]
[knocking on door]
[caller]
[Quintana]
We wanted to make contact with the, uh, gentleman inside the apartment,
to, to check his welfare and make sure he was okay.
[knocking on door]
We knock on the door a few times, and we get no response.
[Campoa] I can smell the gas coming out from the, uh, windows and the door.
The worst case scenario was a fire or something bigger, like an explosion.
And the person still being inside the apartment.
I started running scenarios through my head,
you know, are we gonna have to start evacuating people?
[knocking on door]
The gentleman inside, is he conscious?
Indio Police!
I got my, my baton out to knock on the door louder.
[baton knocking on door]
Right after I did it, the gentleman inside either threw something at the door,
or kicked the door.
[Campoa]
[indistinct shouting]
[Quintana]
[indistinct shouting]
[Quintana]
I was like, okay, well, he’s fine.
You know, he’s breathing. He was yelling and cussing at us.
[indistinct shouting]
[Quintana]
[siren blares]
[Quintana]
[caller]
I saw the fire trucks pulling up on the street,
so I’m gonna go out on the street, so the firemen can do their job.
[Quintana]
[maintenance man]
-[explosion] -[Quintana]
[bleep]
-[explosion] -[Quintana]
[Campoa]
[Quintana]
[Quintana groaning in pain]
[Quintana]
As I’m walking past the apartment, I hear the air suck in.
I felt a, uh, surge of hot air, like a missile striking something.
-[explosion] -[Quintana]
And alls I see is debris passing me.
[Campoa] I heard a noise.
I saw the roof of the apartment go up in the air.
I saw fire coming out of the roof.
I felt the air pushing you back after an explosion.
[Quintana] [bleeping]
When the fireball and the debris started to engulf me,
it seemed like everything slowed down.
I hear a, a rush of air coming at me.
I remember ducking my head and trying to get as small as possible as I’m running,
because I knew a fireball was coming.
[explosion]
And I could see every piece of debris passing me,
the flame, the smoke.
[Oakley] I saw the fireball consume the IPD officer.
I couldn’t even see his feet. He was engulfed in flames.
I just saw him disappear into a fireball.
You know, and, and then you’re thinking, oh, God, come out of there alive.
[Campoa]
[Campoa] As soon as I saw his hand, I saw that it was burned.
It was burned bad.
To the point that I was, like, this is not something that he could just walk away.
[Quintana grunts] [bleep]
[firefighter]
[Campoa]
My first thought was, you know, the gentleman inside.
[Quintana]
I looked down at it and I could see that my arm has been burned.
I don’t know to what extent.
It felt like when you burn your, your hand on the stove.
[Campoa]
[Quintana]
That kind of feeling, but just all over my, uh, my arm.
[Quintana]
[Campoa]
[Quintana]
The fire department was already there getting their gear on.
[firefighter]
[Quintana]
[firefighter]
[Quintana] I didn’t want to bother them too much,
’cause I knew they had to go in and, and help the, the gentleman inside.
[Quintana]
[firefighter]
[Oakley] I just remember him kinda holding his arm up,
and seeing the skin sloughing off.
[Quintana]
[Campoa]
I’m also concerned, did he inhale anything?
How’s his breathing? How’s his lung capacity?
If you’re damaged internally in your lungs, you literally have minutes to live.
[Campoa] Is there evacuating people?
[Quintana]
[sirens blare]
[Oakley] That officer, I could tell he was in shock.
But he still wanted to do his job.
[Quintana]
[firefighter]
Working with his partner, trying to assist getting other people out of there.
[Quintana]
And I was just like, no, you are now a patient.
And he still was in police mode.
[indistinct chatter]
[Quintana] I don’t know how bad the damage was.
I didn’t know if anybody else was hurt.
If other buildings were on fire.
[Quintana]
[firefighter]
[Quintana]
[Campoa]
I knew there was probably someone still inside that building.
That person didn’t wanna come out.
Let’s get the people that are listening away from harm’s way.
Huh?
[Campoa]
[officer]
[Quintana]
[Oakley] Looked like he had about 90% third degree burns.
Most people that are exposed to any type of explosion,
they’re gonna feel that temperature go up to 800, maybe 1,000 degrees
within a split second.
You’re probably gonna take one or two breaths and inhale 800 degrees.
So your chances of survivability are not good.
[EMT]
[Quintana] I took off all my gear that I had on,
and just felt like I just ran, you know, a marathon or something.
I was glad to be in a ambulance, you know, laying down.
[Quintana]
-[Campoa] -[Quintana]
[Campoa]
[Campoa] Officer Quintana seemed okay inside the, uh, ambulance.
He was taken to a local hospital, to a, uh, burn unit.
[Quintana] When they brought me in, they determined it was a second degree burn.
I got transported from, uh, JFK Hospital in Indio to Arrowhead Hospital.
[Campoa] It took the fire department about an hour
to, uh, put down the fire.
And for the, uh, helicopter to get there.
[Quintana] The gentleman in the apartment was airlifted also to Arrowhead Hospital.
He died the next day from his injuries.
[Oakley] When we began investigating,
we could see that the stove was removed.
There were some markings on the valve.
And the valve was still open.
Um, from there, we start to look at how did the gas explode.
Has there been any maintenance done lately?
Has there been any call out for, hey, I’m having a gas leak in my apartment.
Everything came back negative.
Everything just pointed back to the resident inside,
that he intentionally took the, uh, the piping off,
opened the gas valve, so it leads to that reasonable suspicion
that he wanted to commit suicide and was successful at it.
[Campoa] I think a few seconds on that day made a, uh, big difference.
If I would have been right in front of that window when the explosion happened...
...I think I woulda died.
Or my injuries would have been really bad.
I don’t think I would be here.
[Quintana] Put me out of work for about five or six weeks
just to let the, the skin to grow back to a good thickness,
where I could work, uh, safely.
I don’t really have any big scars from it.
I, I do have a line on the back of my tricep.
You wouldn’t even notice it if you just, uh, looked at it real quick.
[Oakley] ANy time that there’s a massive explosion,
if it’s confined in any type of building,
think of it as a bullet that’s encased,
and then it goes down the barrel of a gun.
All that energy has to come out someplace.
The walls are, in this case, cinderblock,
the weakest part is the door,
the windows, and then secondary, the roof.
And the conditions that were set up, uh, that day were perfect.
Hollywood couldn’t even do a better production,
’cause what I saw, all the windows and the fireball blow out,
the roof literally lifted up, and came back down.
[Campoa] I think we were extremely lucky that day.
[Oakley] It always amazes me.
Police officers who have minimal firefighting knowledge and training
will be the first ones to run into a building,
whether it’s on fire or full of gas.
Yeah, they have a bulletproof vest.
It doesn’t mean anything to a fire, let alone an explosion.
For them to put their lives at risk like that, that’s another hero.
[narrator] In Georgia, 20 miles North of Atlanta,
is Roswell.
Veteran officer Jeffrey Sanders is on patrol,
and leaving a service station.
[Officer Jeff Sanders] I see this, uh, large SUV on the other side of the median.
[siren blares]
The vehicle’s either stalled, or it was involved in an accident.
It was just hard to say at first what was going on.
We deal with seven to eight accidents a day.
This one struck me strange, because it wasn’t up against a tree,
It was just kinda sitting in the roadway.
The airbags had been deployed,
and I noticed a individual sitting in the driver’s seat.
I really can’t see what’s going on,
so I walk around to the passenger side.
I thought, we have a pretty serious accident.
You know, he’s knocked out.
[narrator] The driver cannot be safely moved.
He could have a neck or spinal injury.
All of a sudden, he goes into an agonal breathing,
which means he’s not getting any air whatsoever.
This guy’s in a serious situation.
I need to help him quick.
This guy’s large.
The only thing to do is just to give him a big bear hug.
I was able to grab a hold of him and squeeze him tight,
and start pulling this guy out of the driver’s seat.
[Sanders grunting]
When I got him laid down on the ground, I started doing CPR,
started doing chest compressions.
I didn’t have time to get my defibrillator from my vehicle.
Let’s go!
I just knew that his heart needed to start pumping blood.
[Officer Jordan Wenslow] I know I need to get there.
And I know I’m the closest unit to him.
I turn the lights on, turn the siren on,
and I was there, probably within two minutes.
[siren blaring]
[Sanders] When you hear sirens approaching...
...it’s like, whoo. You know, I got help coming.
You know, help’s here.
I remember seeing my partner, Officer Wenslow, running up the roadway.
He had the defibrillator.
As he was unzipping the bag and pulling out all the contents,
and getting ready to get the pads ready,
I continued CPR chest compressions.
[Sanders panting]
[victim breathing with labor]
[defibrillator] Begin by removing all clothing from the patient’s chest.
These AEDs, they’re very simple.
Soon as you open the bag, the machine itself is telling you
where and how to apply the pads to the patient.
[defibrillator] Place pads exactly as shown...
[Sanders]
[defibrillator] Press firmly to place...
[Sanders]
[victim breathing with labor]
[defibrillator] No one should touch the patient. Analyzing.
He immediately put the pads onto the chest area.
[defibrillator] Shock advised. Stay clear of the patient.
-[Wenslow] -[Sanders]
[defibrillator] Shock delivered.
[Sanders]
I was like, wow. That was a big shock.
[Sanders]
[defibrillator]
We stood clear. It gave one shock.
We continued CPR.
[Sanders]
[Wenslow]
[Sanders]
As I was doing the second part of the chest compressions, this guy’s eyes fluttered.
And I look at Officer Wenslow, he looks at me, and we’re like...
...did that just happen?
[Sanders]
-[Wenslow] -[Sanders]
This guy, he just opens his eyes.
It’s like, [laughing] hey, welcome back to the living, you know?
And he’s, he’s just, just staring at us.
[Sanders]
-[Wenslow] -[Sanders]
[Wenslow] The best way to describe it is almost suddenly in a deep sleep,
to all of a sudden, they’re awake now.
That surprise on their face, and the surprise on your own, that they’re now awake.
-[Sanders] -[Wenslow]
-[victim] -[Sanders]
[Wenslow]
[Wenslow] The fact that he was talking, he was becoming alert...
...made it even better.
[defibrillator] 45 seconds ...
[Sanders]
[Wenslow]
[Sanders]
[Wenslow]
[Sanders]
[victim]
[Sanders]
I remember when the EMS, the ambulances, arrive,
you get a sense of, [sighs in relief] relief knowing that this guy’s,
is still in serious condition.
[Wenslow]
[EMT]
[Wenslow]
[victim]
[Wenslow]
[victim]
[Wenslow]
[defibrillator]
-[Wenslow] -[Sanders]
[Wenslow] So Jeff and I, when that relief hit us,
we shared a fist bump,
and then it was back to business.
We had work to continue to do.
[Sanders]
[narrator] Emergency responders take the 56-year-old to the hospital.
He survives the ordeal.
Now, the officers turn their attention to the SUV.
[Sanders]
[Wenslow]
[Sanders]
[Wenslow]
[EMT]
[Sanders]
[EMT]
It could have been a lot worse as far as his foot continuing to be on the accelerator,
and the vehicle gaining a lot higher speed.
[Wenslow] Obviously, in our job, we have days
that are just horrible.
And then one day, you’re gonna have a great day like this,
where you save someone’s life.
And you go, yeah, that’s, that’s why I got into this job. That’s...
That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to make a difference.
[narrator] Officer Sanders has since retired.
[Sanders] I’m not as young as I used to be,
or as strong as I used to be.
And being able to,
to help this guy out of this vehicle, get him back
to where he could be with his family, was just, uh, something to, uh,
end a law enforcement career with.
It was, uh, something pretty, uh, special and exciting.