July 9, 2025 • 41 mins
Sean Houle is a former police officer and K9 handler who served in North Carolina for nearly a decade. In 2021, he was critically wounded in the line of duty—shot twice at point-blank range with his own service weapon. Since medically retiring, Sean has become a sought-after speaker on faith, resilience, and the lifelong commitment to service..
In this unforgettable episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator Sheryl McCollum welcomes retired Officer Sean Houle for a powerful firsthand account of survival and purpose. Sean recounts the harrowing night he was ambushed by a suspect from an earlier call—an encounter that would change his life forever. He shares the moments of chaos, the struggle to stay conscious, and the clarity that surfaced as his life hung in the balance. Together, he and Sheryl discuss the split-second decisions officers face, how department policy shapes those choices, and the unbreakable bond between handler and K9 partner. But Sean’s story doesn’t end on the pavement. During recovery, a surprising moment on a family beach trip reminds him that his calling to serve wasn’t finished—it was just taking a new shape. This episode is a profound look at duty, faith, and the quiet strength behind the badge.
Show Notes:
- (0:00) Welcome to Zone 7 with guest Sean Houle
- (1:45) The traffic stop that changed everything
- (3:00) Familiar faces and high-risk situations
- (5:00) The slow roll and signs of trouble
- (7:30) Commands ignored, tension escalates
- (8:00) Following policy: use-of-force, K9 deployment, and the art of bluffing
- (14:00) A terminated track and what came next
- (15:30) Face to face again—Sean confronts Quinton Blocker
- (20:00) A fight inside a Toyota Corolla
- (23:00) Disarmed and staring down the barrel
- (25:00) Thoughts of family, faith, and a second chance
- (27:00) The second shot—and the will to survive
- (28:30) “I’m dying, help.”
- (29:15) “72 Units of Blood”: The trauma, stroke, and fight for survival
- (30:15) Jax, the K9 partner, and the heartbreaking malfunction
- (32:00) End of shift: going 10-42 for the last time
- (35:00) A new calling, a life saved in Myrtle Beach
- (40:00) “Next to creating a life, the finest thing a man can do is save one.” – Abraham Lincoln
Update on the Case:
In 2024, Quinton Donnell Blocker—the man who shot Officer Sean Houle—was sentenced to 55 to 72 years in prison after being convicted on multiple charges, including attempted murder. The sentencing marked a long-awaited moment of justice for Sean, his family, and his department.
Thanks for listening to another episode! If you're enjoying Zone 7, head over to Apple Podcasts and leave a quick rating and review—it’s one of the best ways to support the show and help others find it.
---
Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a collaboration between universities and colleges that brings researchers, practitioners, students and the criminal justice community together to advance techniques in solving cold cases and assist fam
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Y'all, I got a new buddy, Sean Hoole. His story
is incredible, and recently we were at a function. My
son and his girlfriend were sitting at a table with
two of my friends y'all know, Kathy Leiner and then
Delle Stewart. None of them had ever met Shawk, didn't
(00:27):
know anything about him. Well, I was kind of co
hosting the event, so I didn't have a lot of
time to, you know, really introduce everybody and kind of
tea ups of conversation. So I just walked over to
these four folks and I just said, Hey, this is
my buddy, Sean Hoole. He was shot in the light
of duty. Bye. And as I'm walking off, I hear
(00:50):
my son and he's talking to Sean and he's like, dude, like,
what in the world is your story scary or a
badass one? And I hear Sean say, well, little of both,
And at that point I knew that table is going
to be just fine. So y'all please help me. Welcome
(01:11):
to our legend series. Sean. Who Sean? How are you? Honey?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I'm doing wonderful. It's so awesome to be on here
with you, and I appreciate it so much. I've been
looking forward to this.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Listen, this is an honor and y'all. All I can
tell y'all is hang on because if you want to
hear a story that leaves you just full of hope
and just being uplifted, this is it.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, it's just going to say that means a great
deal to hear you say that. Huh. I just certainly
hope that's what people take from it, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Well, it was February twenty first, twenty twenty one, at
about three thirty in the morning. So this particular night,
you make a stop, you recognize the person in the car,
this particular night, as many people as you've come into
contact with when you make this traffic stop, you recognize
(02:12):
somebody and it's somebody you've dealt with before. So you're
going to talk about your body reacting. I'm sure you
were like, okay, you're you're familiar.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
It was an amazing series of circumstances coming together. I
truly believe my faith tells me that everything in this
life happens for a reason. I do believe that, I
really do. I don't think it's it's not a cliche
thing that I just say, I really do believe that
that's the case. At this time in my career, I'm
(02:47):
working at a smaller agency. I started initially working in
an agency that was six hundred and I don't know,
six hundred and something officer, six hundred and eighty something
officers or whatever I think we had. I went to
a smaller agent. See after five years and we'll serving
out the last five until this night at a smaller agency.
So in smaller agencies you can get this sort of
(03:10):
like where you run into people that you've dealt with
on the street, and it can even happen in a
larger agency too, especially when you're a scientist zones or
beats or whatever. You get familiar with the people that
you deal with on a day to day basis. So
you know, I see this vehicle go by me, and
every single one of them is displaying to me the
behavior that tells me something is going on. Now, I
(03:31):
already was familiar with this inge of the individual's history,
so you know, I knew if anything was going on,
it was a high probability involved narcotics because he was
a user and I knew that, and of course, knowing
who he is, as I'm following behind this car looking
for a lawful reason to stop it, because I do
(03:54):
want to say this, because people get really freaked out
about interdiction. They immediately go to, you're just violating people's rights. No, no, no,
no no. Understand, interdiction behavior is obviously not a lawful
reason to stop a vehicle. Behavior is every reason to
pay attention to a vehicle until you get a lawful
(04:16):
reason to stop the vehicle within your jurisdiction. So that
being said, I had every reason to pay attention to
this vehicle. I did not have a lawful reason to
stop it yet. But I ran this individual's name, who
I had dealt with some months prior on this death investigation,
and discovered that the same warrant ofa that he had
active that night that I let him go on was
(04:37):
still active some months later. And that was what ended
up being my lawful reason to stop this vehicle.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Unbelievable. So once you get it stopped, what went down?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yep? So I stopped the vehicle. It did a slow
roll on me. Now all of you in law enforcement
know the slow role. If you've ever done the traffic
stop in your our life, you know, the slow roll.
The slow roll means one of two things or three things.
I guess you could say they're formulating a plan. Somebody's
(05:12):
coming out, possibly shooting, somebody's coming out possibly running or there,
or they're just hiding things within the vehicle that they
hope that you're not going to find if you happen
to get in there and search it. Nothing good is
happening when you've got a vehicle slow rolling on you.
The vehicle slow rolls, and I see the front passenger
(05:33):
door start to crack open. As soon as I see
this happen, I know that that front passenger he is
either coming out running, he is either coming out shooting,
one of those two things, because there's no other reason
whatsoever why that front front passenger door should should open. Uh,
there is no reason why anybody gets out on the
traffic stop. And as I see this, I've already slung
(05:56):
my driver's door open, and I've got my foot hanging
out to touch the ground. And sure enough, when it stops,
that passenger door swings open and the front right passenger
jumps and he runs. Not surprising there. Like I said,
it occurs pretty regularly around the area that I served,
(06:19):
and so he takes off the opposite direction of me. Well,
like I said, I already had my driver's door slung
open and foot almost touching the ground. So by the
time he comes out of his vehicle, I'd thrown mine
in park, and I was out of my tahoe and
almost to the back of the suspect vehicle very quickly
at this point. So he looks back as he's gotten
(06:45):
probably about twenty five yards or so ahead of the
suspect vehicle in the opposite direction of me running and
he sees me. He might not have been twenty five yards,
might have been more like twenty or so, fifteen twenty,
So anyway, he sees me, me, and he comes back
to the front of the suspect vehicle, which which was
(07:05):
odd because that's not tip. I mean, normally, they just
they run and they keep running, and you're either gonna
make the decision to chase somewhere, you're gonna make the
decision to hold your position and wait for other whatever
the case. But they keep running either way. Well, he
comes back to the suspect vehicle, the front of it. Well,
(07:26):
I'm giving them commands, telling him because at this point
he is under arrest at this point, he's resisted, delayed
abstruct our d O is what it's called here in
North Carolina. Resist, delay, obstruct. He's delaying and obstructing my
investigation in this traffic stop because he's exited the vehicle
and he's already started to take off. So he is
(07:46):
going to jail for that for sure. So I tell him,
you're under arrest. Let me see your hands. I can
see his hands because they're on the front hood of
the suspect vehicle and we have this sort of standoff
at the back of the suspect vehicle and him at
the front, and I have a canine, and my canine
is trained in apprehension. However, being within policy departmental policy,
(08:12):
I am not allowed at this point in time to
release my canine for an apprehension because all he's the
offense he's committed at this point in time is a
nonviolent resisting offense, which does not fall in the use
of force continuum for deploying my canine for an apprehension
via bite.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
So you're doing the right thing. MM, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
That's how I That's how I operated as a police officer.
I did everything by the book always. I always did
everything by the book. I always did the right thing
from a departmental policy standpoint, but also just from a
humane standpoint, like you just do the right thing. You
treat people how you want to be treated. You. You know,
(08:57):
nothing is worth worth risking your job and the means
to support your family, you know, over trying to you know,
over extend or whatever the case. Look, just do the
right thing. And that's how I always operated, That's how
I always wanted to be And so on this night, yeah,
I was trying to do the right thing. I knew
(09:18):
I had a tool in the back of my tahoe
that could apprehend Quinton in a hot second without me
having to put a hand on them, and could have ran,
you know, ten times as fast as I could have.
But also a big part of being a good canine
(09:38):
handler is you have to know those policies, you have
to know those case laws, and you have to walk
the line. You have to be on the straight and narrow.
That's a big liability in the back of your tahoe,
and things can go south with those canines if you've
got somebody not handling them properly. So anyway I'm doing
the right thing. I don't let him go, knowing that
(10:01):
it would be outside of policy, but there's nothing that
says you can't bluff. So that being said, I bluffed
a lot over the course of my career with my dog,
and I got I had People would crawl out of
the woods to me as soon as they heard my
dog bark, as soon as they heard me say, police
K nine, if you don't surrender yourself, my dog will
(10:21):
be released and he may bite you. People would come
crawling out of the woods right to me, giving up.
And so you know, in the case of Quentin, I
did bluff and I said look, and he could see
my dog through the front windshield of my tie who
I had my red light on over Jackson's kennel, which
illuminated Jackson's silhouette sitting in his kennel watching everything happen
(10:44):
through the front windshield as he's trained to do. So
it was no he knew I was a Canon officer.
He could see the dog, and so anyway, I threatened
the dog. I said, look, I let my dog go,
and he says to me, it looks me right in
the eyes, and he says to me, I can't use
the explicitives he used, but let them go. Basically let
(11:05):
him go. So when you've got somebody that gives you
that sort of a response, you know you're dealing with
somebody that's that's pretty pretty serious. That he had no
fear of whatsoever of that dog, none whatsoever. He obviously
had no fear of me, but he didn't even have
any fear of my dog, which is a is a
(11:26):
big concern that's pretty concerning inside of law enforcement. So
anyway we have this sort of standoff, I don't obviously
end up releasing the dog because it's not within policy,
and Quinton ends up taking off on foot into a
nearby wooded area. Now, I did not have any backup
(11:47):
with me other than my police came on, and there
were multiple people inside of the vehicle, one of which
I knew how to warrant. So the decision I made
at that point in time was I was not going
to pursue Quinton on foot. I was going to stay
with the vehicle, deal with them, deal with what may
(12:08):
or may not be inside of it, uh and wait
for my backup to get there. Because I also knew
that I had a canine that was also capable of tracking,
which I knew I would be using here shortly, so
Quinton runs off. I don't pursue. I end up putting
(12:28):
my dog on the ground to conduct a track. I
put Jack's on the ground and we start tracking the tracks.
The track was successful in that it yielded articles of
clothing discarded by Quinton as he ran through the woods.
We tracked to a front door of an apartment in
(12:49):
a nearby apartment complex. The door was locked. We were
actually able to get into the apartment to later check
it because get this, it was the apartment that belonged
to the driver of the vehicle that I just stopped.
It all just keeps tying together, yep, and that apartment
because they were drug buddies, and that's where he came
(13:13):
to Kernerswill to do dope. We checked the apartment. Quentin's
not in there. My belief was that Quintin saw that
the door was locked. He tried it, couldn't get in.
It was locked. He doesn't have a key. Obviously it's
not his apartment. So he goes and he lays down
in the wooded area nearby, waiting for us to leave
and hoping that he can just get back up with
(13:35):
his buddy once we're all gone. That was my belief,
and I stand by that one hundred and ten percent
because I have encountered that over multiple times in my career,
and on that belief and with that feeling that that intuition,
I've taken Jack's and we have located the suspect, believing
(13:57):
that that's what he's done. And so what I did
that night was I to Jack's back out into the
wooded area and we started doing basically an area search
with Jackson long lead back and forth, covering the whole
wooded area. I had about a quarter of the woods
left to search with Jacks and a backup officer with me,
where I have no doubt in my mind we would
(14:18):
have found Quinton. However, the supervisor on duty that night
terminated the track, which is a whole another deal, but
there just wasn't anything I could do about it. So
the track gets terminated by that supervisor, and that's it.
Quinton is not found. Quinton is not identified because the
(14:40):
individual that I arrested on his warrant only knew him
by a street name. The street name we could not
locate in the computer in the database, and the other
person in the vehicle that was also arrested for a
warrant of their own was completely uncooperative, cussing us up
one side, down the other, and refusing to cooperate. They
(15:01):
knew Quinton very well, but they would not give up
any information on Quinton, and so we were left not
knowing who Quinton was. And that was it. And so
I arrest my person. An other officer takes the other
person to jail. We find drug paraphernalia in the car,
(15:22):
We find that both of them have warrants, and we're
down at the jail. Both of the people we arrested
were released on written promises. The other person was a nightmare. Okay,
I'm sorry. Look I've got a heart, but good grief,
this person they just were given it to us and
(15:44):
would not stop the entire time. So there was no
help that was going to be given to this person
in a situation where we could have lended a hand.
So this person, they were released. We put them out
there side door of the jail onto Second Street in
Winston Salem, said good luck, hope we don't see you again,
(16:06):
and that was that. The individual I rested was very polite,
very respectful, so that being said, I decided that I
was going to take this man back to his apartment,
which is not something we have to do. It's not
that's something that sometimes officers will do just out of
the conness of their heart, if they're looking to if
(16:27):
they're willing to help somebody that's been decent. And so
that's what I was doing that night, was I was
giving this man a ride back to his apartment, which
was nearby to the original traffic stop. We show back
up to the apartment. He's in my prisoner area in
my tahoe, which is right next to the kennel. It's
like a quarter size sitting area for a prisoner. And
(16:52):
then the dogs got the rest of it, and we
show back up into the parking lot of his apartment complex.
My headline lights, which my bright lights were on, shine
across the back of a vehicle in the parking lot parked.
And as soon as my headlights shine across the back
of the vehicle, I could I saw a man sitting
(17:13):
in the driver's seat, and I knew right away. I
could see that it was Quinton. It was the same
man that ran for me earlier. I could see it.
I could, you know, physical description like it was. It
was the guy. I knew it, And so as soon
as my lights shine across the back of the vehicle,
he actually ducks down. He didn't know if it was
(17:35):
a police vehicle or what kind of vehicle was. He
just didn't want to be in headlights, so he ducks
trying to avoid the headlights. But I had already seen him,
so his ducking was was moot at that point. So
anyway he ducks down, I'd already seen him. I can't
my vehicle behind his vehicle that he was in, which
was a vehicle he illegally entered, was not his vehicle,
(17:56):
so essentially he broke into it. It was very cold
that night, and he was getting out of the ailments essentially.
I think it was like twenty something agrees that night.
So I get out and I make contact with him,
and I make contact with him at the driver's door,
and I'm telling him he's under arrest, let me see
your hands. All the things that you hear cops say,
(18:17):
I'm saying all those things, and he's, as he was
doing earlier, was disregarding every bit of my instructions. He
actually was saying no, and he was shaking his head no,
indicating he was not going to cooperate with me. So
I expected that he had locked the doors of the car,
was my assumption. And all of the sudden, he makes
(18:41):
a very sudden movement from the driver's side, a driver's
seat that he was in over toward the passenger side
area of the vehicle. I don't know what he has
on him. I don't know what he's found in that vehicle.
And I came up in the days of law enforcement,
which I mean, I'm not old, you know, and I
but I came up in a time of law enforcement
(19:02):
where you know, you progress through the use of force continuum,
and always the first thing was, you know, you've got
your verbal commands, and then you know virgalmands aren't taking
then you know you go hands the pyramid. Yeah, you've
got your pyramid, you got your use of force continuum.
And I believe in hands. I don't like to get
reliant upon the tools that I carry because I feel
(19:26):
like that, uh, that over reliance on the tools that
you carry is going to make you much less proficient
in the other areas of the job. When it comes
to you know, being able to physically take somebody into custody,
so I never was reliant on my tools. Well, seeing
that sudden movement in my mind, immediately going to grab
(19:49):
gain physical control. I slung open that driver's side door
and was shocked that it was actually unlocked. And so
I slung open the door and I reach in and
I grab him. He was a bigger guy than I was,
and his momentum actually pulled me into the tie or
into the car with him. This was a nineties model
Toyota Corolla. We are two full grown men now inside
(20:13):
of a nineties model Toyota Corolla. And those things are tiny,
let me tell you. And I'm wearing all my gear.
He is bigger than I was. And it was an
immediate fight. There was no build up, There was no
I'm trying to get away. It was punching, kicking. It
was immediate and immediate brawl inside of this Toyto Corolla. Well,
(20:36):
as we're fighting, at a point during the fight, the
front passenger side door opens up. I'm assuming he opened
it because I know I didn't. And what happened was
when the door opens up, I happened to have my
back against it, and so I fall out back first
(20:59):
onto the asphalt outside of the car. He falls out
on top of me, and by happenstance, I have now
ended up in one of the worst positions you can
be in in a physical fight with a suspect, now
on my back, with the offender on top of me
and in the in the upper hand position. At this
(21:24):
point in the fight, I realize that it is I'm
realizing that this is headed toward the direction of being
a fight for my life and not a fight to
just apprehend a fleeing suspect. What happens is he begins
to because I'm latched onto him like a leech, I'm
(21:46):
not coming off. I've got him in sort of a headlock,
and I've got my legs wrapped around his body. But
he still has leverage with his lower body on the ground,
so he's able to use that strength that he has
to his advantage. And so what he does is he
starts picking me up off the ground where I'm not
letting go of him, and body slamming me back into
(22:07):
the asphalt, and we go up and down and up
and down, and I'm hitting the ground hard. And at
a point during all of that, I go to manipulate
my firearm, which I carry a block for a forty
five caliber block carrying spear gold dot hollow points. I
go to manipulate my firearm, and about the time I'm
trying to manipulate it, I get picked up and slammed
(22:28):
down the highest and the hardest that I had that
I had been up to this point, and my head hits,
my hand hits, and when my hand hits, my gun bounces,
pops out of my hand and bounces off to my right.
And I'm sort of laid on my side now at
this point, and Quinton is basically free of me completely
(22:51):
at this point, and I remember that we sort of
locked eyes, and I remember he looked over toward the
direction of where my gun went, and I remember thinking
to myself, Lord, no, just don't go for it. And
about the second that I think that, he dives sort
of out from between my legs. I am laid on
my side and I'm looking at my gun. I see
(23:11):
his hand hit my gun and he spins it while
it's still on the ground, and when he spends it,
it lines up perfect with my face. And now I'm
staring down the barrel of my own forty five calver
Service weapon and he pulls the trigger with his thumb
while it's still on the ground.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Sean, I just got to say, I know your story.
I've heard your story. I've heard you tell it live.
Every time you get to that point, I'm thinking, this
man is staring down the barrel of his own gun.
I mean, you have to think this is it one
hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
There was no doubt in my mind. I saw the
muzzle flash, I heard the boom of the gun go off,
and then I felt like I got hit by a
sledgehammer in my face. And everything sort of goes numb
in the area where I felt like I got hit
(24:10):
with a sledgehammer, and I remember kind of looking to
see what I could see, sort of like bringing my
chin to my chest and like looking to see what
I could see. And it was like a faucet of
blood coming out of my face. It was like a fawcet.
I could hear it. I could I could actually hear
(24:31):
the flow of blood coming out of my face. And
I knew in that moment that I was going to die.
I made peace with it. I am am a Christian saved.
I know where I'm going when this side of life
is over. And I knew, Okay, this is the day,
(24:51):
this is where it all ends, and I'm going to
heaven now. And I closed my eyes not to give up,
but I just I closed my eyes for a second
sort of, I guess processing you could say that all
of that, and I saw my wife and my kids.
I'm married at this point, married about thirteen years, and
(25:16):
I mean at this point in my life, not at
the time I was shot, but now married about thirteen years.
At the time I was shot, my oldest was four
and my youngest was eight months old. And when I
would leave out for work, most of the time Ellie
would be holding that's my wife would be holding my
eight month old, and they'd be on the front porch,
and my four year old a lot of times would
(25:38):
chase me down the driveway as I left out for work,
and or he'd either be standing next to them on
the front porch. And I would always do the lights
and the sirens for them when I left out, and
that was sort of the routine. And I remember when
I closed my eyes, I saw my wife and kids
(25:58):
standing in front of me. It was like it wasn't
even just It's like I felt them. They were there
I could see my wife and my kids, and it
looked they looked so real to me standing in front
of me. It looked like they I had the image,
the vision of them that that of them standing on
the front porch seeing me off to work, and they
(26:19):
looked so real. I literally felt like I could reach
out and touch them. And I opened my eyes back
up and there was this energy and this strength, like
supernatural that just came over my body at the time
that I saw that, and it was like, this is
not it. This is It's not over. There's still a
(26:43):
fight here. And I opened my eyes back up and
I'm not dead yet. And I'm still laying next to
that Toyota Corolla in between that and those dumpsters and
that parking lot, and I don't see Quinton right away.
I start looking for Quinton while I'm laying on the ground,
and I see him. He's kind of down by my
feet in that general area, and he's starting to get
(27:03):
back up because he was still ground level at that point,
and he's starting to get back up, and I see
the gun coming up to my head again. He's going
to execute me. While I was laying on the ground.
He's raising the gun up to my head again, and
as I see this gun coming up, I just remember
I popped up off the ground and it was like
I hadn't been shot at all. And I reached out
(27:25):
my left hand to where I saw the gun coming up.
I felt it hit my palm and I closed and
I didn't have a lot of strength, but with what
strength I had, I just jerked it away from my head.
And when I jerked it away from my head, he
shot me through the center of my left hand and
took off my middle finger. I didn't have really any
(27:45):
energy left in me at that point. That was it
my wife and my kids, and the Lord gave me
what I needed to do that and that was about
all I had, and I fell back to the ground
on my face, and I just remember just waiting for
somebody to show up, and thinking about my kids, my wife,
(28:05):
thinking about my eight month old child that wouldn't know
who I was if I had died, that wouldn't know
who I was, would have to learn about me by
pictures and stories. It wasn't long after that that my
buddies they started showing up. I saw blue and red
light splashing on the street up above, and they started
showing up, and I remember them calling out to me,
(28:26):
and the final thing that I said on the radio
was I'm dying help. I just remember after I fell
back to the ground, I keyed up on the radio
and said I'm dying help.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
And they came as fast as they could, didn't.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
They seventeen seconds after the second time I was shot.
They believed that that was really the only reason why
Quinton didn't put a third bullet in me, is because
they showed up so quickly after the second shot that
on my body camera apparently it actually shows him light
me up again with a flashlight on the end of
my gun, like he was going to shoot me again,
and about time you see blue and red lights showing
(29:02):
up on the street up above. And that they believe
is the only reason he ran off at that point
in time was because he saw their lights coming down
the street, or else he probably would have shot me
a third time.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
I mean, you're hurt bad. Seventy two units of blood.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
The first bullet that struck me in the face, It
shattered the right side of my face, It ricocheted up,
it severed my crowded artery at the base of my
skull and lodged behind my neck. The second bullet that
went through the center of my left hand blew off
my middle finger with it. I ended up bleeding out
(29:45):
over three and a half times. I had to get
seventy two units of blood, and on top of all that,
I had a stroke as well. They had to reconstruct
my face, they had to reconstruct my t ride at artery,
reconstruct my hand, and we're able to successfully do all
(30:05):
of that. The stroke was difficult to overcome, but I've
been able to mostly mostly get back to normal after
suffering that.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Now, Buddy, people are gonna want to know, tell him
what was going on with Jack's. Where is he?
Speaker 2 (30:23):
I wore a door popper on my vest that I
could push a button and pop the door of my
tahoe open to release Jacks, who is trained in that
situation to apprehend bite the suspect with no command from
me whatsoever. I don't have to say a word. He
just sees somebody fighting me and he bites them. However,
(30:47):
the door popper functioned malfunctioned, and I could not get
the door to pop, and so Jack's could not be
released from my tahoe to come to my aid. He
had to watch everything happen through the front windshield of
my tahoe, and that was hell for him to experience that,
(31:08):
not being able to do what he is born, bred
and trained to do in that situation.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Well, I remember something you said to me. You said,
I love a life of service. I love being called
during somebody's absolute worst moment of their life to be
able to help them in some way. Now, sadly you
had to go ten forty two for the remainder. Tell
(31:36):
everybody what that means and what happened.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, so that was a very very, very very difficult day.
I cried a lot.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Admittedly I have watched your video four times. I've cried
every time.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
So what MATC is talking about there with the ten
forty two for the remainders is I had to end
up medically retiring from the job. And so what happens
when an officer retires off the job is more often
than not anyway, is they'll call out on the radio
end of watch essentially. And so ten forty two for
(32:19):
us where I worked, ten forty two was end of shift.
So ten forty one was the beginning of shift. So
I you know, before I got on the radio to
do this. The last time I spoke on the radio
was to say help, I'm dying. And the next time
I had to get back on the radio was to
say that I was retiring. I called K ninety eight
(32:45):
will be ten forty two, and the dispatcher gave a
dissertation and spoke about the service to the agency and
law enforcement career, and it just I could barely get
the words out with all the crying that I was doing.
I didn't know that that was going to be done. Actually,
(33:07):
my captain came walking over to me with a radio
in his hand, and as soon as I saw the
radio in his hand and he was walking toward me,
I knew exactly what was going to happen. And I
immediately started crying and I could could barely hold it together.
I poured my heart and soul into that job. It
was just a very tough day to announce that at
(33:29):
thirty one years old and ten years in, when it
was something I expected to be announcing at, you know,
forty eight fifty years old with twenty eight years in,
and so it was just it was tough. You know,
the dispatcher gave a dissertation, you know, for the service
to the community and to the law enforcement in my
(33:54):
law enforcement career, and also for Jack's as well, because
they retired Jacks with me. It was just a really
tough day and that was that was how my my
law enforcement career officially came to an end. Was calling
out ten forty two on the radio for the for
the final time. It's just a bittersweet experience. I was
(34:18):
thankful to be alive, but it was very tough because
I poured my heart and soul into that career. I
loved it so much. I still love it, and so
it was really, really, really tough to sort of unexpectedly
have to leave it so soon.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
You know, again, that was a powerful video for me
to watch. And again I knew your story. I've met you,
we've hung out, But to watch that, it's powerful to me,
and it just shows exactly the heartache. Of course, you
are grateful to be alive, but you know you suffered
(34:56):
several losses in that one event. But I want to
tell everybody something y'all know, sometimes things happen and you
just can't ignore it. It is so clear to me
that you got a message that there ain't no way
you could ignore it. Because all this happened, you had
(35:19):
to go through therapy, you had to go through several operations,
and finally you and your sweet family decide we're going
to go to the beach and we're going to relax.
We're just going to be together and enjoy time with
each other and tell everybody what happened at Myrtle Beach.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Yeah. So there again, everything happens for reasons. So my
family and I take a vacation to Myrtle Beach and
riptides are terrible on the coast of North Carolina and
South Carolina. In this case, we were in South Carolina.
We're on Myrtle Beach and we're sitting on the beach,
and of course the cop in me is never gonna leave.
(36:02):
I'm also medically trained. Where I was I worked for
em S before I was a cop and fired, and
in the fire department as well, so I'm always like
have a heightened sense of awareness, like what's going on
around me. And so I am scanning the break and
I see these two guys pulling well, I see a
bunch of commotion and I see these two guys. It
(36:23):
looks like they're pulling somebody to the oide. Of the surf,
and so I see a crowd starting to form. So
I run over there and uh me and uh it
was a nurse that happened to be right there as well.
Uh encounter this this elderly man that got pulled out
of the surf by these these two younger guys, and
(36:45):
uh he was blue, uh, very very blue, and not breathing. Uh,
no pulse, and so we began CPR. Uh the nurse
was doing compressions. I started doing breath and tandem and
after a couple of rounds of of the CPR, we
(37:08):
we Uh he's the fella started to aspirate fluid and uh,
which is a good sign. And uh we were able
to get a return of a pulse. Uh so rosk
and he was not out of the woods by any
stretch of the imagination. He was still in very, very
very bad shape at that point. But we got a
pulse back and uh he started breathing, not well, but
(37:33):
breathing on his own, and uh the ambulance came, rushed
him to the hospital and uh that was the last
I knew, uh that evening or that day, that evening, well,
the next day we come back to the same general
area of the beach and I see a lifeguard and
I said, hey, you know, you know the status of
that fella from yesterday at the beach. He said, man,
(37:56):
were you a part of that? And I said, yeah,
I was doing the breath And he was like, that
guy's on the beach right now. I s are you
kidding me? I said, we're talking about the same guy.
And he's like, yeah, he is on the beach right now,
and he pointed where in the direction where I could
find him. So me and my family went walking up
the beach and sure enough, there he was with his daughters,
his wife, his grandkids, and just big old smile on
(38:21):
his face, gives me a big hug, you know, and
we have this whole, big reunion. It wasn't just me.
The nurse that was doing compressions was there. The guys
that pulled him out of the water was there, and
some of the lifeguards were there, and we had this
big old reunion on the beach with his family after
this man was just pulseless and not breathing, drifting in
(38:45):
the water after getting caught in a rip current. And
he was back on the beach the next day, and
we actually still maintained communication to this day. We exchange
numbers and we talk and give updates on how each
other is doing and stuff like that. So it was
just truly an amazing experience God, you know, putting you
in the right place at the right time, And that's
what I certainly that's how That's how I feel this
(39:09):
life is. I feel like things don't happen for just
no reason. I feel like everything happens for a reason,
and that being one of those things. There's a reason why.
You know, I'll never know all the reasons, if there
are multiple for why that I lived that night, but
one reason I can point to specifically and say, well,
(39:31):
if I was not alive, if I did die that night,
I wouldn't have been there on the beach along with
those other awesome people to do what needed to be
done to get this fella back living and breathing, to
go on and enjoy his life with his family. So
you know, there's one reason right there.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Sean, let me tell you something. You can say it
another way. Had you not been shot, you would not
have been there. I mean, everything does happen for a reason.
I mean, you had to go through something so horrific
but again look what you did with it well, Sean
who I cannot thank you enough for sharing your incredible
(40:13):
story and I just want to say again y'all heard
it here. He has such an unbelievable, just horrific event
where he believed wholeheartedly he was going to die right there,
and not only as he saved, he goes on to
(40:35):
save somebody else's life when he thought his life of
service was over. It's just an incredible story. So Sean,
thank you again, honey, y'all on going to end Zone
seven the way that I always do with a quote,
next to creating a light, the finest thing a man
(40:57):
can do is save one. Abraham Lincoln, I'm Cheryl McCollum,
and this is his own seven
Y'all, I got a new buddy, Sean Hoole. His story
is incredible, and recently we were at a function. My
son and his girlfriend were sitting at a table with
two of my friends y'all know, Kathy Leiner and then
Delle Stewart. None of them had ever met Shawk, didn't
(00:27):
know anything about him. Well, I was kind of co
hosting the event, so I didn't have a lot of
time to, you know, really introduce everybody and kind of
tea ups of conversation. So I just walked over to
these four folks and I just said, Hey, this is
my buddy, Sean Hoole. He was shot in the light
of duty. Bye. And as I'm walking off, I hear
(00:50):
my son and he's talking to Sean and he's like, dude, like,
what in the world is your story scary or a
badass one? And I hear Sean say, well, little of both,
And at that point I knew that table is going
to be just fine. So y'all please help me. Welcome
(01:11):
to our legend series. Sean. Who Sean? How are you? Honey?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I'm doing wonderful. It's so awesome to be on here
with you, and I appreciate it so much. I've been
looking forward to this.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Listen, this is an honor and y'all. All I can
tell y'all is hang on because if you want to
hear a story that leaves you just full of hope
and just being uplifted, this is it.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, it's just going to say that means a great
deal to hear you say that. Huh. I just certainly
hope that's what people take from it, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Well, it was February twenty first, twenty twenty one, at
about three thirty in the morning. So this particular night,
you make a stop, you recognize the person in the car,
this particular night, as many people as you've come into
contact with when you make this traffic stop, you recognize
(02:12):
somebody and it's somebody you've dealt with before. So you're
going to talk about your body reacting. I'm sure you
were like, okay, you're you're familiar.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
It was an amazing series of circumstances coming together. I
truly believe my faith tells me that everything in this
life happens for a reason. I do believe that, I
really do. I don't think it's it's not a cliche
thing that I just say, I really do believe that
that's the case. At this time in my career, I'm
(02:47):
working at a smaller agency. I started initially working in
an agency that was six hundred and I don't know,
six hundred and something officer, six hundred and eighty something
officers or whatever I think we had. I went to
a smaller agent. See after five years and we'll serving
out the last five until this night at a smaller agency.
So in smaller agencies you can get this sort of
(03:10):
like where you run into people that you've dealt with
on the street, and it can even happen in a
larger agency too, especially when you're a scientist zones or
beats or whatever. You get familiar with the people that
you deal with on a day to day basis. So
you know, I see this vehicle go by me, and
every single one of them is displaying to me the
behavior that tells me something is going on. Now, I
(03:31):
already was familiar with this inge of the individual's history,
so you know, I knew if anything was going on,
it was a high probability involved narcotics because he was
a user and I knew that, and of course, knowing
who he is, as I'm following behind this car looking
for a lawful reason to stop it, because I do
(03:54):
want to say this, because people get really freaked out
about interdiction. They immediately go to, you're just violating people's rights. No, no, no,
no no. Understand, interdiction behavior is obviously not a lawful
reason to stop a vehicle. Behavior is every reason to
pay attention to a vehicle until you get a lawful
(04:16):
reason to stop the vehicle within your jurisdiction. So that
being said, I had every reason to pay attention to
this vehicle. I did not have a lawful reason to
stop it yet. But I ran this individual's name, who
I had dealt with some months prior on this death investigation,
and discovered that the same warrant ofa that he had
active that night that I let him go on was
(04:37):
still active some months later. And that was what ended
up being my lawful reason to stop this vehicle.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Unbelievable. So once you get it stopped, what went down?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yep? So I stopped the vehicle. It did a slow
roll on me. Now all of you in law enforcement
know the slow role. If you've ever done the traffic
stop in your our life, you know, the slow roll.
The slow roll means one of two things or three things.
I guess you could say they're formulating a plan. Somebody's
(05:12):
coming out, possibly shooting, somebody's coming out possibly running or there,
or they're just hiding things within the vehicle that they
hope that you're not going to find if you happen
to get in there and search it. Nothing good is
happening when you've got a vehicle slow rolling on you.
The vehicle slow rolls, and I see the front passenger
(05:33):
door start to crack open. As soon as I see
this happen, I know that that front passenger he is
either coming out running, he is either coming out shooting,
one of those two things, because there's no other reason
whatsoever why that front front passenger door should should open. Uh,
there is no reason why anybody gets out on the
traffic stop. And as I see this, I've already slung
(05:56):
my driver's door open, and I've got my foot hanging
out to touch the ground. And sure enough, when it stops,
that passenger door swings open and the front right passenger
jumps and he runs. Not surprising there. Like I said,
it occurs pretty regularly around the area that I served,
(06:19):
and so he takes off the opposite direction of me. Well,
like I said, I already had my driver's door slung
open and foot almost touching the ground. So by the
time he comes out of his vehicle, I'd thrown mine
in park, and I was out of my tahoe and
almost to the back of the suspect vehicle very quickly
at this point. So he looks back as he's gotten
(06:45):
probably about twenty five yards or so ahead of the
suspect vehicle in the opposite direction of me running and
he sees me. He might not have been twenty five yards,
might have been more like twenty or so, fifteen twenty,
So anyway, he sees me, me, and he comes back
to the front of the suspect vehicle, which which was
(07:05):
odd because that's not tip. I mean, normally, they just
they run and they keep running, and you're either gonna
make the decision to chase somewhere, you're gonna make the
decision to hold your position and wait for other whatever
the case. But they keep running either way. Well, he
comes back to the suspect vehicle, the front of it. Well,
(07:26):
I'm giving them commands, telling him because at this point
he is under arrest at this point, he's resisted, delayed
abstruct our d O is what it's called here in
North Carolina. Resist, delay, obstruct. He's delaying and obstructing my
investigation in this traffic stop because he's exited the vehicle
and he's already started to take off. So he is
(07:46):
going to jail for that for sure. So I tell him,
you're under arrest. Let me see your hands. I can
see his hands because they're on the front hood of
the suspect vehicle and we have this sort of standoff
at the back of the suspect vehicle and him at
the front, and I have a canine, and my canine
is trained in apprehension. However, being within policy departmental policy,
(08:12):
I am not allowed at this point in time to
release my canine for an apprehension because all he's the
offense he's committed at this point in time is a
nonviolent resisting offense, which does not fall in the use
of force continuum for deploying my canine for an apprehension
via bite.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
So you're doing the right thing. MM, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
That's how I That's how I operated as a police officer.
I did everything by the book always. I always did
everything by the book. I always did the right thing
from a departmental policy standpoint, but also just from a
humane standpoint, like you just do the right thing. You
treat people how you want to be treated. You. You know,
(08:57):
nothing is worth worth risking your job and the means
to support your family, you know, over trying to you know,
over extend or whatever the case. Look, just do the
right thing. And that's how I always operated, That's how
I always wanted to be And so on this night, yeah,
I was trying to do the right thing. I knew
(09:18):
I had a tool in the back of my tahoe
that could apprehend Quinton in a hot second without me
having to put a hand on them, and could have ran,
you know, ten times as fast as I could have.
But also a big part of being a good canine
(09:38):
handler is you have to know those policies, you have
to know those case laws, and you have to walk
the line. You have to be on the straight and narrow.
That's a big liability in the back of your tahoe,
and things can go south with those canines if you've
got somebody not handling them properly. So anyway I'm doing
the right thing. I don't let him go, knowing that
(10:01):
it would be outside of policy, but there's nothing that
says you can't bluff. So that being said, I bluffed
a lot over the course of my career with my dog,
and I got I had People would crawl out of
the woods to me as soon as they heard my
dog bark, as soon as they heard me say, police
K nine, if you don't surrender yourself, my dog will
(10:21):
be released and he may bite you. People would come
crawling out of the woods right to me, giving up.
And so you know, in the case of Quentin, I
did bluff and I said look, and he could see
my dog through the front windshield of my tie who
I had my red light on over Jackson's kennel, which
illuminated Jackson's silhouette sitting in his kennel watching everything happen
(10:44):
through the front windshield as he's trained to do. So
it was no he knew I was a Canon officer.
He could see the dog, and so anyway, I threatened
the dog. I said, look, I let my dog go,
and he says to me, it looks me right in
the eyes, and he says to me, I can't use
the explicitives he used, but let them go. Basically let
(11:05):
him go. So when you've got somebody that gives you
that sort of a response, you know you're dealing with
somebody that's that's pretty pretty serious. That he had no
fear of whatsoever of that dog, none whatsoever. He obviously
had no fear of me, but he didn't even have
any fear of my dog, which is a is a
(11:26):
big concern that's pretty concerning inside of law enforcement. So
anyway we have this sort of standoff, I don't obviously
end up releasing the dog because it's not within policy,
and Quinton ends up taking off on foot into a
nearby wooded area. Now, I did not have any backup
(11:47):
with me other than my police came on, and there
were multiple people inside of the vehicle, one of which
I knew how to warrant. So the decision I made
at that point in time was I was not going
to pursue Quinton on foot. I was going to stay
with the vehicle, deal with them, deal with what may
(12:08):
or may not be inside of it, uh and wait
for my backup to get there. Because I also knew
that I had a canine that was also capable of tracking,
which I knew I would be using here shortly, so
Quinton runs off. I don't pursue. I end up putting
(12:28):
my dog on the ground to conduct a track. I
put Jack's on the ground and we start tracking the tracks.
The track was successful in that it yielded articles of
clothing discarded by Quinton as he ran through the woods.
We tracked to a front door of an apartment in
(12:49):
a nearby apartment complex. The door was locked. We were
actually able to get into the apartment to later check
it because get this, it was the apartment that belonged
to the driver of the vehicle that I just stopped.
It all just keeps tying together, yep, and that apartment
because they were drug buddies, and that's where he came
(13:13):
to Kernerswill to do dope. We checked the apartment. Quentin's
not in there. My belief was that Quintin saw that
the door was locked. He tried it, couldn't get in.
It was locked. He doesn't have a key. Obviously it's
not his apartment. So he goes and he lays down
in the wooded area nearby, waiting for us to leave
and hoping that he can just get back up with
(13:35):
his buddy once we're all gone. That was my belief,
and I stand by that one hundred and ten percent
because I have encountered that over multiple times in my career,
and on that belief and with that feeling that that intuition,
I've taken Jack's and we have located the suspect, believing
(13:57):
that that's what he's done. And so what I did
that night was I to Jack's back out into the
wooded area and we started doing basically an area search
with Jackson long lead back and forth, covering the whole
wooded area. I had about a quarter of the woods
left to search with Jacks and a backup officer with me,
where I have no doubt in my mind we would
(14:18):
have found Quinton. However, the supervisor on duty that night
terminated the track, which is a whole another deal, but
there just wasn't anything I could do about it. So
the track gets terminated by that supervisor, and that's it.
Quinton is not found. Quinton is not identified because the
(14:40):
individual that I arrested on his warrant only knew him
by a street name. The street name we could not
locate in the computer in the database, and the other
person in the vehicle that was also arrested for a
warrant of their own was completely uncooperative, cussing us up
one side, down the other, and refusing to cooperate. They
(15:01):
knew Quinton very well, but they would not give up
any information on Quinton, and so we were left not
knowing who Quinton was. And that was it. And so
I arrest my person. An other officer takes the other
person to jail. We find drug paraphernalia in the car,
(15:22):
We find that both of them have warrants, and we're
down at the jail. Both of the people we arrested
were released on written promises. The other person was a nightmare. Okay,
I'm sorry. Look I've got a heart, but good grief,
this person they just were given it to us and
(15:44):
would not stop the entire time. So there was no
help that was going to be given to this person
in a situation where we could have lended a hand.
So this person, they were released. We put them out
there side door of the jail onto Second Street in
Winston Salem, said good luck, hope we don't see you again,
(16:06):
and that was that. The individual I rested was very polite,
very respectful, so that being said, I decided that I
was going to take this man back to his apartment,
which is not something we have to do. It's not
that's something that sometimes officers will do just out of
the conness of their heart, if they're looking to if
(16:27):
they're willing to help somebody that's been decent. And so
that's what I was doing that night, was I was
giving this man a ride back to his apartment, which
was nearby to the original traffic stop. We show back
up to the apartment. He's in my prisoner area in
my tahoe, which is right next to the kennel. It's
like a quarter size sitting area for a prisoner. And
(16:52):
then the dogs got the rest of it, and we
show back up into the parking lot of his apartment complex.
My headline lights, which my bright lights were on, shine
across the back of a vehicle in the parking lot parked.
And as soon as my headlights shine across the back
of the vehicle, I could I saw a man sitting
(17:13):
in the driver's seat, and I knew right away. I
could see that it was Quinton. It was the same
man that ran for me earlier. I could see it.
I could, you know, physical description like it was. It
was the guy. I knew it, And so as soon
as my lights shine across the back of the vehicle,
he actually ducks down. He didn't know if it was
(17:35):
a police vehicle or what kind of vehicle was. He
just didn't want to be in headlights, so he ducks
trying to avoid the headlights. But I had already seen him,
so his ducking was was moot at that point. So
anyway he ducks down, I'd already seen him. I can't
my vehicle behind his vehicle that he was in, which
was a vehicle he illegally entered, was not his vehicle,
(17:56):
so essentially he broke into it. It was very cold
that night, and he was getting out of the ailments essentially.
I think it was like twenty something agrees that night.
So I get out and I make contact with him,
and I make contact with him at the driver's door,
and I'm telling him he's under arrest, let me see
your hands. All the things that you hear cops say,
(18:17):
I'm saying all those things, and he's, as he was
doing earlier, was disregarding every bit of my instructions. He
actually was saying no, and he was shaking his head no,
indicating he was not going to cooperate with me. So
I expected that he had locked the doors of the car,
was my assumption. And all of the sudden, he makes
(18:41):
a very sudden movement from the driver's side, a driver's
seat that he was in over toward the passenger side
area of the vehicle. I don't know what he has
on him. I don't know what he's found in that vehicle.
And I came up in the days of law enforcement,
which I mean, I'm not old, you know, and I
but I came up in a time of law enforcement
(19:02):
where you know, you progress through the use of force continuum,
and always the first thing was, you know, you've got
your verbal commands, and then you know virgalmands aren't taking
then you know you go hands the pyramid. Yeah, you've
got your pyramid, you got your use of force continuum.
And I believe in hands. I don't like to get
reliant upon the tools that I carry because I feel
(19:26):
like that, uh, that over reliance on the tools that
you carry is going to make you much less proficient
in the other areas of the job. When it comes
to you know, being able to physically take somebody into custody,
so I never was reliant on my tools. Well, seeing
that sudden movement in my mind, immediately going to grab
(19:49):
gain physical control. I slung open that driver's side door
and was shocked that it was actually unlocked. And so
I slung open the door and I reach in and
I grab him. He was a bigger guy than I was,
and his momentum actually pulled me into the tie or
into the car with him. This was a nineties model
Toyota Corolla. We are two full grown men now inside
(20:13):
of a nineties model Toyota Corolla. And those things are tiny,
let me tell you. And I'm wearing all my gear.
He is bigger than I was. And it was an
immediate fight. There was no build up, There was no
I'm trying to get away. It was punching, kicking. It
was immediate and immediate brawl inside of this Toyto Corolla. Well,
(20:36):
as we're fighting, at a point during the fight, the
front passenger side door opens up. I'm assuming he opened
it because I know I didn't. And what happened was
when the door opens up, I happened to have my
back against it, and so I fall out back first
(20:59):
onto the asphalt outside of the car. He falls out
on top of me, and by happenstance, I have now
ended up in one of the worst positions you can
be in in a physical fight with a suspect, now
on my back, with the offender on top of me
and in the in the upper hand position. At this
(21:24):
point in the fight, I realize that it is I'm
realizing that this is headed toward the direction of being
a fight for my life and not a fight to
just apprehend a fleeing suspect. What happens is he begins
to because I'm latched onto him like a leech, I'm
(21:46):
not coming off. I've got him in sort of a headlock,
and I've got my legs wrapped around his body. But
he still has leverage with his lower body on the ground,
so he's able to use that strength that he has
to his advantage. And so what he does is he
starts picking me up off the ground where I'm not
letting go of him, and body slamming me back into
(22:07):
the asphalt, and we go up and down and up
and down, and I'm hitting the ground hard. And at
a point during all of that, I go to manipulate
my firearm, which I carry a block for a forty
five caliber block carrying spear gold dot hollow points. I
go to manipulate my firearm, and about the time I'm
trying to manipulate it, I get picked up and slammed
(22:28):
down the highest and the hardest that I had that
I had been up to this point, and my head hits,
my hand hits, and when my hand hits, my gun bounces,
pops out of my hand and bounces off to my right.
And I'm sort of laid on my side now at
this point, and Quinton is basically free of me completely
(22:51):
at this point, and I remember that we sort of
locked eyes, and I remember he looked over toward the
direction of where my gun went, and I remember thinking
to myself, Lord, no, just don't go for it. And
about the second that I think that, he dives sort
of out from between my legs. I am laid on
my side and I'm looking at my gun. I see
(23:11):
his hand hit my gun and he spins it while
it's still on the ground, and when he spends it,
it lines up perfect with my face. And now I'm
staring down the barrel of my own forty five calver
Service weapon and he pulls the trigger with his thumb
while it's still on the ground.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Sean, I just got to say, I know your story.
I've heard your story. I've heard you tell it live.
Every time you get to that point, I'm thinking, this
man is staring down the barrel of his own gun.
I mean, you have to think this is it one
hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
There was no doubt in my mind. I saw the
muzzle flash, I heard the boom of the gun go off,
and then I felt like I got hit by a
sledgehammer in my face. And everything sort of goes numb
in the area where I felt like I got hit
(24:10):
with a sledgehammer, and I remember kind of looking to
see what I could see, sort of like bringing my
chin to my chest and like looking to see what
I could see. And it was like a faucet of
blood coming out of my face. It was like a fawcet.
I could hear it. I could I could actually hear
(24:31):
the flow of blood coming out of my face. And
I knew in that moment that I was going to die.
I made peace with it. I am am a Christian saved.
I know where I'm going when this side of life
is over. And I knew, Okay, this is the day,
(24:51):
this is where it all ends, and I'm going to
heaven now. And I closed my eyes not to give up,
but I just I closed my eyes for a second
sort of, I guess processing you could say that all
of that, and I saw my wife and my kids.
I'm married at this point, married about thirteen years, and
(25:16):
I mean at this point in my life, not at
the time I was shot, but now married about thirteen years.
At the time I was shot, my oldest was four
and my youngest was eight months old. And when I
would leave out for work, most of the time Ellie
would be holding that's my wife would be holding my
eight month old, and they'd be on the front porch,
and my four year old a lot of times would
(25:38):
chase me down the driveway as I left out for work,
and or he'd either be standing next to them on
the front porch. And I would always do the lights
and the sirens for them when I left out, and
that was sort of the routine. And I remember when
I closed my eyes, I saw my wife and kids
(25:58):
standing in front of me. It was like it wasn't
even just It's like I felt them. They were there
I could see my wife and my kids, and it
looked they looked so real to me standing in front
of me. It looked like they I had the image,
the vision of them that that of them standing on
the front porch seeing me off to work, and they
(26:19):
looked so real. I literally felt like I could reach
out and touch them. And I opened my eyes back
up and there was this energy and this strength, like
supernatural that just came over my body at the time
that I saw that, and it was like, this is
not it. This is It's not over. There's still a
(26:43):
fight here. And I opened my eyes back up and
I'm not dead yet. And I'm still laying next to
that Toyota Corolla in between that and those dumpsters and
that parking lot, and I don't see Quinton right away.
I start looking for Quinton while I'm laying on the ground,
and I see him. He's kind of down by my
feet in that general area, and he's starting to get
(27:03):
back up because he was still ground level at that point,
and he's starting to get back up, and I see
the gun coming up to my head again. He's going
to execute me. While I was laying on the ground.
He's raising the gun up to my head again, and
as I see this gun coming up, I just remember
I popped up off the ground and it was like
I hadn't been shot at all. And I reached out
(27:25):
my left hand to where I saw the gun coming up.
I felt it hit my palm and I closed and
I didn't have a lot of strength, but with what
strength I had, I just jerked it away from my head.
And when I jerked it away from my head, he
shot me through the center of my left hand and
took off my middle finger. I didn't have really any
(27:45):
energy left in me at that point. That was it
my wife and my kids, and the Lord gave me
what I needed to do that and that was about
all I had, and I fell back to the ground
on my face, and I just remember just waiting for
somebody to show up, and thinking about my kids, my wife,
(28:05):
thinking about my eight month old child that wouldn't know
who I was if I had died, that wouldn't know
who I was, would have to learn about me by
pictures and stories. It wasn't long after that that my
buddies they started showing up. I saw blue and red
light splashing on the street up above, and they started
showing up, and I remember them calling out to me,
(28:26):
and the final thing that I said on the radio
was I'm dying help. I just remember after I fell
back to the ground, I keyed up on the radio
and said I'm dying help.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
And they came as fast as they could, didn't.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
They seventeen seconds after the second time I was shot.
They believed that that was really the only reason why
Quinton didn't put a third bullet in me, is because
they showed up so quickly after the second shot that
on my body camera apparently it actually shows him light
me up again with a flashlight on the end of
my gun, like he was going to shoot me again,
and about time you see blue and red lights showing
(29:02):
up on the street up above. And that they believe
is the only reason he ran off at that point
in time was because he saw their lights coming down
the street, or else he probably would have shot me
a third time.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
I mean, you're hurt bad. Seventy two units of blood.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
The first bullet that struck me in the face, It
shattered the right side of my face, It ricocheted up,
it severed my crowded artery at the base of my
skull and lodged behind my neck. The second bullet that
went through the center of my left hand blew off
my middle finger with it. I ended up bleeding out
(29:45):
over three and a half times. I had to get
seventy two units of blood, and on top of all that,
I had a stroke as well. They had to reconstruct
my face, they had to reconstruct my t ride at artery,
reconstruct my hand, and we're able to successfully do all
(30:05):
of that. The stroke was difficult to overcome, but I've
been able to mostly mostly get back to normal after
suffering that.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Now, Buddy, people are gonna want to know, tell him
what was going on with Jack's. Where is he?
Speaker 2 (30:23):
I wore a door popper on my vest that I
could push a button and pop the door of my
tahoe open to release Jacks, who is trained in that
situation to apprehend bite the suspect with no command from
me whatsoever. I don't have to say a word. He
just sees somebody fighting me and he bites them. However,
(30:47):
the door popper functioned malfunctioned, and I could not get
the door to pop, and so Jack's could not be
released from my tahoe to come to my aid. He
had to watch everything happen through the front windshield of
my tahoe, and that was hell for him to experience that,
(31:08):
not being able to do what he is born, bred
and trained to do in that situation.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Well, I remember something you said to me. You said,
I love a life of service. I love being called
during somebody's absolute worst moment of their life to be
able to help them in some way. Now, sadly you
had to go ten forty two for the remainder. Tell
(31:36):
everybody what that means and what happened.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, so that was a very very, very very difficult day.
I cried a lot.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Admittedly I have watched your video four times. I've cried
every time.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
So what MATC is talking about there with the ten
forty two for the remainders is I had to end
up medically retiring from the job. And so what happens
when an officer retires off the job is more often
than not anyway, is they'll call out on the radio
end of watch essentially. And so ten forty two for
(32:19):
us where I worked, ten forty two was end of shift.
So ten forty one was the beginning of shift. So
I you know, before I got on the radio to
do this. The last time I spoke on the radio
was to say help, I'm dying. And the next time
I had to get back on the radio was to
say that I was retiring. I called K ninety eight
(32:45):
will be ten forty two, and the dispatcher gave a
dissertation and spoke about the service to the agency and
law enforcement career, and it just I could barely get
the words out with all the crying that I was doing.
I didn't know that that was going to be done. Actually,
(33:07):
my captain came walking over to me with a radio
in his hand, and as soon as I saw the
radio in his hand and he was walking toward me,
I knew exactly what was going to happen. And I
immediately started crying and I could could barely hold it together.
I poured my heart and soul into that job. It
was just a very tough day to announce that at
(33:29):
thirty one years old and ten years in, when it
was something I expected to be announcing at, you know,
forty eight fifty years old with twenty eight years in,
and so it was just it was tough. You know,
the dispatcher gave a dissertation, you know, for the service
to the community and to the law enforcement in my
(33:54):
law enforcement career, and also for Jack's as well, because
they retired Jacks with me. It was just a really
tough day and that was that was how my my
law enforcement career officially came to an end. Was calling
out ten forty two on the radio for the for
the final time. It's just a bittersweet experience. I was
(34:18):
thankful to be alive, but it was very tough because
I poured my heart and soul into that career. I
loved it so much. I still love it, and so
it was really, really, really tough to sort of unexpectedly
have to leave it so soon.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
You know, again, that was a powerful video for me
to watch. And again I knew your story. I've met you,
we've hung out, But to watch that, it's powerful to me,
and it just shows exactly the heartache. Of course, you
are grateful to be alive, but you know you suffered
(34:56):
several losses in that one event. But I want to
tell everybody something y'all know, sometimes things happen and you
just can't ignore it. It is so clear to me
that you got a message that there ain't no way
you could ignore it. Because all this happened, you had
(35:19):
to go through therapy, you had to go through several operations,
and finally you and your sweet family decide we're going
to go to the beach and we're going to relax.
We're just going to be together and enjoy time with
each other and tell everybody what happened at Myrtle Beach.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Yeah. So there again, everything happens for reasons. So my
family and I take a vacation to Myrtle Beach and
riptides are terrible on the coast of North Carolina and
South Carolina. In this case, we were in South Carolina.
We're on Myrtle Beach and we're sitting on the beach,
and of course the cop in me is never gonna leave.
(36:02):
I'm also medically trained. Where I was I worked for
em S before I was a cop and fired, and
in the fire department as well, so I'm always like
have a heightened sense of awareness, like what's going on
around me. And so I am scanning the break and
I see these two guys pulling well, I see a
bunch of commotion and I see these two guys. It
(36:23):
looks like they're pulling somebody to the oide. Of the surf,
and so I see a crowd starting to form. So
I run over there and uh me and uh it
was a nurse that happened to be right there as well.
Uh encounter this this elderly man that got pulled out
of the surf by these these two younger guys, and
(36:45):
uh he was blue, uh, very very blue, and not breathing. Uh,
no pulse, and so we began CPR. Uh the nurse
was doing compressions. I started doing breath and tandem and
after a couple of rounds of of the CPR, we
(37:08):
we Uh he's the fella started to aspirate fluid and uh,
which is a good sign. And uh we were able
to get a return of a pulse. Uh so rosk
and he was not out of the woods by any
stretch of the imagination. He was still in very, very
very bad shape at that point. But we got a
pulse back and uh he started breathing, not well, but
(37:33):
breathing on his own, and uh the ambulance came, rushed
him to the hospital and uh that was the last
I knew, uh that evening or that day, that evening, well,
the next day we come back to the same general
area of the beach and I see a lifeguard and
I said, hey, you know, you know the status of
that fella from yesterday at the beach. He said, man,
(37:56):
were you a part of that? And I said, yeah,
I was doing the breath And he was like, that
guy's on the beach right now. I s are you
kidding me? I said, we're talking about the same guy.
And he's like, yeah, he is on the beach right now,
and he pointed where in the direction where I could
find him. So me and my family went walking up
the beach and sure enough, there he was with his daughters,
his wife, his grandkids, and just big old smile on
(38:21):
his face, gives me a big hug, you know, and
we have this whole, big reunion. It wasn't just me.
The nurse that was doing compressions was there. The guys
that pulled him out of the water was there, and
some of the lifeguards were there, and we had this
big old reunion on the beach with his family after
this man was just pulseless and not breathing, drifting in
(38:45):
the water after getting caught in a rip current. And
he was back on the beach the next day, and
we actually still maintained communication to this day. We exchange
numbers and we talk and give updates on how each
other is doing and stuff like that. So it was
just truly an amazing experience God, you know, putting you
in the right place at the right time, And that's
what I certainly that's how That's how I feel this
(39:09):
life is. I feel like things don't happen for just
no reason. I feel like everything happens for a reason,
and that being one of those things. There's a reason why.
You know, I'll never know all the reasons, if there
are multiple for why that I lived that night, but
one reason I can point to specifically and say, well,
(39:31):
if I was not alive, if I did die that night,
I wouldn't have been there on the beach along with
those other awesome people to do what needed to be
done to get this fella back living and breathing, to
go on and enjoy his life with his family. So
you know, there's one reason right there.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Sean, let me tell you something. You can say it
another way. Had you not been shot, you would not
have been there. I mean, everything does happen for a reason.
I mean, you had to go through something so horrific
but again look what you did with it well, Sean
who I cannot thank you enough for sharing your incredible
(40:13):
story and I just want to say again y'all heard
it here. He has such an unbelievable, just horrific event
where he believed wholeheartedly he was going to die right there,
and not only as he saved, he goes on to
(40:35):
save somebody else's life when he thought his life of
service was over. It's just an incredible story. So Sean,
thank you again, honey, y'all on going to end Zone
seven the way that I always do with a quote,
next to creating a light, the finest thing a man
(40:57):
can do is save one. Abraham Lincoln, I'm Cheryl McCollum,
and this is his own seven
Host
Sheryl McCollum
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.