thinking god, i hope she answers. and i remember she answered. i remember saying, baby, i ve been shot, and i don t know if i ll make it. i love you, okay? though, sergeant kellermannn is lucky to be alive,ç the bult wound results in the loss of his right eye. it wasn t as bad as i thought. of course, i lost my vision, and it wasn t as bad as it could have been. months later sergeant kellermann and his colleagues return to the bakery parking lot, and they explained what we didn t see on dash cam. but i took out a stance basically right here behind my car. most of me was shielded except this part of me that was looking over my pistol, and that s when he took the shot. ambulance stopped. we went from your car to the ambulance and then the helicopter was stopped right out here. the relationship with the officers that were on that scene has definitely grown. any time you re in some type of situation like we were in, there s definitely a camaraderie
as soon as he saw me, his attention was drawn. walked across the front of the building and put his focus on me. then and there, i knew that i was in the wrong place. he s got the gun aimed at me. the man with the shotgun is james richard hill. he s in the thick of a heated dispute with his girlfriend who works at the bakery. we have people in the store. tell ám to get away from the windows. even before officer ashley arrives on the scene, he knows the situation is dire. the fact that he got on the radio and told dispatch to have the people inside the store move away from the windows, that told me that he was trying to prepare to use deadly force against this guy. as the dash cam rolls, sergeant kellermann makes numerous attempts to negotiate with hill, but the gunman refuses to comply. put the gun down, man! put it down! no! what s going on?
you weren t pretty before, jim. he was even looking at me saying you didn t look good before the shooting. it took me a minute to realize, hey, i m still getting humor out of this. i can hear everything he s saying. and sergeant kellermann and i joke around a lot with one another. and when he said that, i just wanted to give him some level of normalcy with him. everybody had a role out there on that scene. the officers that responded by shooting back had a role that they played. officer riley, when he arrived he took on the role of being by my side. he knew i ve been hit, and i can t say enough about him because him being on the ground and seeing the blood i knew i was going to die. i m going to take a look at you, okay? sergeant kellermann is losing a lot of blood and fears losing his life, but somehow has the presence of mind to call his wife. i can talk about this whole event, it s talking about my wife that gets to me. i remember dialing her number,
in talking to him the whole time, i basically got my pistol out and it s pointed at him. and he opened the breach of the rifle of the shotgun and i thought he was going to disarm it. i thought he was going to give up and put it down. and he was looking to make sure it was loaded. police backup arrives and quickly gets into position. they wait for hill to make a move. come on, man! i saw that he had taken a defensive posture and he was laying across the trunk of the vehicle pointing his firearm toward sergeant kellermann, and i knew as soon as i pulled in and i looked over i had a good shot.54i put the gun down! when you get on the scene like that and you make a decision that deadly force will have to be used which i made pretty quickly, especially after he opens the breach of the weapons and looks to see if it was loaded and cocked it back, i knew there was going to be a shooting. put the gun down, buddy!
the gunman fires a single shot striking sergeant kellermann in the face.ç i was still trying to communicate with him and he was trying to put the gun down and trying to get some kind of demeanor with him. i don t remember the gun blast. i remember hearing it, and i knew it was him that shot, and i felt the percussion on my face. just as i was about to fire my first shot, he shot. and it kind of distracted me for a second. shortly after he shot, i fired my first shot. and you see the window on the car that he s leaning on blow out. that was my first shot. in an instant, several officers open fire on the gunman, as officer tyson riley races to the aid of sergeant kellermann. the other officers that were there, i trust them with my life. i knew that they were going to do anything a they could do to protect me and sergeant kellermann. and at that point i chose to holster my weapon and go to him.