[music playing]
OFFICER 1 (ON RADIO): He has multiple caliber
guns in the basement.
[gunshot]
OFFICER 2 (ON RADIO): He is willing and ready to have
a shootout with us.
[siren blaring]
DAN BRITE: My name is Dan Brite, and I will never forget what
happened on September 2, 2016.
[music playing]
I was a plainclothes detective with what we call the impact
unit, and we focused a lot on the more violent type of crime
that would happen.
It's challenging.
You always want to resolve the situations successfully
without anybody getting hurt, but you always have to prepare
for the worst case scenario.
OFFICER 2 (ON RADIO): Units en route to the suicidal subject.
Male has a loaded 9 millimeter with him.
He's loading his AK-47.
Says he will kill whoever tries to stop him.
DAN BRITE: The suspect's name was Randall Rodick,
and we had a lot of interaction with him
over previous years, most of it for
mental health-related issues.
The location is within close proximity
of a middle school, an elementary school,
a hospital, and a rehab center.
All those areas, it was what we call soft targets, people that
are susceptible to attacks.
And by the time we had got on scene,
we had set up roadblocks.
He saw the roadblock, stopped, and turned his RV around
and went back to his house.
OFFICER 1 (ON RADIO): OK, I've got a male
going back to the garage.
He is carrying a rifle and what looks like an ammo can.
DAN BRITE: The impact team, we were instructed
to follow him to his house.
Our whole goal was to isolate him in his RV,
and we were going to wait until negotiations showed up.
I had positioned my vehicle in between the RV
and in between the house.
But because of the angle of my truck,
I was the only officer that he could see.
So he started firing his AK-47 round.
OFFICER 1 (ON RADIO): Shots fired, shots fired!
Man down!
One of ours!
I had fallen down from being shot,
and I continued firing at the RV until I went unconscious.
OFFICER 2 (ON RADIO): DB's down.
Roll up, medical.
DAN BRITE: SWAT medic arrived on scene,
threw me in the back of my unmarked truck,
and they rushed me to the hospital.
But as I'm going into the ER, the suspect had crashed
the RV, got out of the RV.
OFFICER 1 (ON RADIO): He's shooting at citizens.
Several units had converged onto his location.
OFFICER 1 (ON RADIO): More shots are being fired on that scene
right now.
They exchanged gunfire, and, yeah,
he was shot and-- and killed.
OFFICER 1 (ON RADIO): He's down!
I'm with the suspect.
He's deceased.
When I arrived in the ER, I was dead.
I didn't have a heartbeat.
[alarm beeping]
The on-call surgeon, he immediately
got access to my heart and massaged it with his hands.
[heart beating]
And my heart started beating on its own.
The round destroyed my spleen, destroyed part of my left lung,
my diaphragm, and my stomach.
While being transported up to OR,
my heart stopped beating a second time.
He immediately went right back to massaging
my heart with his hands.
I had less than a 1% chance for survival.
Because I refused to give up, I'm--
I'm still here today.
I was in ICU for just over 30 days on a lot
of different medications.
And I think they told me during that time that I was paralyzed,
but it didn't really stick.
It wasn't until I got to the rehabilitation center
that they had brought in a wheelchair.
I remember just staring at that wheelchair
and actually refusing to get into it for a few hours
because I didn't want to accept the fact that--
that I was paralyzed.
[music playing]
I was angry at anything and everybody.
Even if they didn't have something
to do with the injury, I was just angry at the situation.
And I was back home and in my own environment
and starting to really realize the things that I couldn't do.
I couldn't take my daughters to the Daddy-Daughter dance
anymore.
I couldn't play basketball with them.
I can't hold my wife's hand while we go for a walk
because I'm constantly pushing the wheelchair.
I went right back to the impact team thinking
that that would help solve a lot of my mental health issues,
but it was just the opposite.
Because when they would go run out the door
to go handle something, I was left behind because I
obviously couldn't go.
And that really started to tear me up.
I couldn't even think.
My mind was stuck on the injury and the consequences
of the injury and the fact that I was paralyzed.
And that instant replay in my head
is what was driving me to--
to be over-stressed, and to have suicidal thoughts.
That was absolutely my lowest point.
[music playing]
My family, my friends refused to leave my side,
and they pushed me towards talking to a therapist.
In law enforcement, we can't emote with people.
We can't grieve with them when they lost a loved one.
We have to maintain our composure.
And what I have learned from this injury
is that suppressing my emotions for the past 16 years,
my pot was finally full.
This injury had caused it to overflow.
You know, the statistics show the last few years
that, you know, officer suicides have surpassed
all the line of duty deaths.
From car accidents to gunshots to violent attacks,
suicides outnumber all those.
[music playing]
With the command staff, we decided to come
up with a wellness program.
My ultimate mission with this program
is to provide services to our employees and their families
so they have a safe and trusted procedure for getting the help
that they need without fear of getting fired,
without fear of getting transferred to a different job,
and without fear of being considered weak.
At first there was some resistance,
but the process is safe and it is confidential.
We want them to share their story
to help break that stigma, because by them
recovering loudly, we help others from dying silently.
Everything about me has changed.
Before injury, when somebody would come to me
for help, I was honestly at a loss of, like,
how can I really help you?
Like, I don't--
I don't really know what to do other
than give you some numbers.
But now I can sit with that person and listen to them
and understand what they're going through.
I found a different way of connecting with people,
and I think I would have never have gained that skill set
had I not traveled this road.
[music playing]
At first, I was mad at Randall Rodick for what he did to me.
Once I started to understand the full story,
I realized that, you know, it's not--
it's not his fault. He didn't get the appropriate help
that he needed.
So I don't-- I don't blame him for what
had happened because now I--
I understand what it's like to have those kind
of mental health issues.
I just wish that our mental health system was better
prepared to handle these issues more appropriately
and at a much faster pace.
[music playing]