What it’s like to shoot at someone

As told to Megan Messerly

Monday, Oct. 19, 2015 | 2 a.m.

An armed robbery was reported at Town Square. Two females had their purses stolen. The suspect fired one round at them with a handgun to scare them, then got into a vehicle and took off.

There are six or eight of us around the area looking for the vehicle. A couple of us go in one direction, the rest to Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue. We spot the vehicle and are going to call out a vehicle stop, but he’s on Tropicana going eastbound, right at the boulevard. So I pull up beside him in case he tries to shoot down Las Vegas Boulevard. He realizes what we’re doing and takes off through the Tropicana parking lot at a high speed.

So we start a pursuit. We lose him around Hacienda and Jones. I go eastbound on Sahara to try to catch up with him. I get to Sahara and Arville, when he blows a red light and takes off again. I follow behind him, and I’ve got about six vehicles behind me. He goes back toward the boulevard. It’s late in the evening, and there is a lot of traffic on the Strip. All I see are brake lights.

He realizes he has nowhere to go, and he’s going at a high speed. I watch him go into ongoing traffic. He spins around, ends up on the median.

I’m the first one to the south, and Officer Bryce Martines was in front. We’ve both got our guns drawn. We’re real close to the World’s Largest Gift Shop, and the only thing I can think is, I don’t want him to get out and shoot someone or take a hostage.

As we approach the car, the tires are still spinning, and they’re smoking. I was about 60 feet from the car when a shot came from inside. I saw the gunfire, I saw the gun, and I heard a bang.

It happened in 3 to 5 seconds. I didn’t have time to think. One second my gun’s at the ready, and the next I’m thinking he’s shooting at us. If I sit and wait and think, he could’ve shot us. My instinct was to shoot the guy so he doesn’t hurt one of us or another citizen.

They say everything gets quiet, and you concentrate on what you’re doing. I remember pulling the trigger on my gun and running for cover. I remember hearing my gun go off like a pellet gun. I carried a .45. The cars were stopping behind us and tires are squealing and everyone is screaming. But I hear nothing except the pop-pop sounds of my gun.

I shot into the passenger window, and Officer Martines shot into the back window. By the time I pull the trigger, everyone else is there. Ten to 12 police cars arrive, and they’re screaming, “Show us your hands!”

Probably about 10 to 30 seconds pass when we realize we’re giving commands and he’s not answering and nothing is moving in the car. A few minutes later, they send an arrest team up and find out he’s already dead. Come to find out later, he killed himself. We thought he had shot at us.

The administrative portion of the investigation took only about 90 days since we didn’t cause him to die. But it’s very stressful when you’re off-duty thinking, “Did I do something wrong?” They get you in with the department psychiatrist and take very good care of you, but it’s very stressful to go through the actual event and think afterward, “Did I do the right thing?”

When he pulled the trigger and shot himself, he slumped over onto the floorboard. Investigators traced where our rounds would have been if he didn’t shoot himself, and our rounds would have gone into him. They asked me how many rounds I shot, and I thought four or five, but it turns out it was seven.

I was close to 16 years on the job when this happened. We all expect sooner or later something like this will happen. It’s something we all think about and train for, but it’s not something where you think, “Today I’m going to go out, and someone’s going to get shot.”