Latest / Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement / #022- "I Woke Up And My Life Was Changed" Part 1

Transcript

#022- "I Woke Up And My Life Was Changed" Part 1 · Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_03: Hit dead center of the engine block.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: I closed my eyes and said, Lord help me.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_03: I left it in his hand and I felt myself in the air.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_03: I just want people to know we are all in this boat together.
• 0:27
  unknown: Okay.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_06: Welcome back, listeners, watchers, viewers, lawyers.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_06: It's Blue Grip Podcast in Tyler Owen and got a pretty good episode today.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_06: Before we dive off into this, you guys hit that subscribe, download these episodes, uh, so we can count for the analytics.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_06: And Clint can get off my ass about the great work that we do here.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_06: Dive or delve?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_06: Delve?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_04: Delve or dive into it.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_06: Not really sure.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_06: I graduated with Irving High School and Ervon.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_06: I'm gonna go with Dive.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_06: Dive.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_06: Just throwing it out there to you.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_06: All right.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_06: Hope you guys are all well.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_06: This is a uh pretty uh pretty important week.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_06: The next couple weeks is the Texas uh Peace Officer Memorial and then the National Peace Officer Memorial.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_06: Uh I've never been to that, and uh maybe one day I can I can go definitely a bucket list.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_06: It's a bucket list item to go to DC for police week.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_06: Absolutely.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_06: Well, we've got a honorary guest on today, uh, one of our board of directors, Justin Ellis, Dart Police, and his wife, Rachel.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_06: The Justin Ellis.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_06: The Justin Ellis.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_06: Mel, welcome on.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: Appreciate meeting here.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_06: So Rachel.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna get fun.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_08: Good to be here.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_06: Well, uh, how long have you been on the board now?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: So this is my second servant, uh, second year on the board, basically.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_06: Okay, and I guess uh what really this is your second year on the board.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_06: You've been at Dart for many years, and we're gonna kind of go into your law enforcement background, and I guess we can really kick just got I guess get kicked off of how you guys met and who is just who is Justin Ellis?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: Well, so back at back a long time ago, Farmers Branch used to be a small town, which it ain't no more.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: Right uh that's where I grew up.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um went to school at Turner.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_06: Was that when they were all like the high school champions, the football championships?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: That's when we kicked Derby's butt a little bit.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's okay.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: I was I wasn't going there.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't going there, but seeing it starting like it.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: Damn.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: All right, well, go ahead.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, we did that back in the day.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but during that time, you know, as a young man that uh was into uh the country lifestyle and music, it was either Denim and Diamonds over in Dallas or you had Country 2000 and then Red River.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and uh just so happened on a teen night, I met that young lady.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, she was 15.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: I was uh 14.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, 14.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: According to the statute.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, so I remember when she was young, and uh we started dating on and off throughout the years, high school sweethearts, and uh you know we grew together.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: It was kind of weird.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um after I graduated, I uh basically went to junior college in Dallas County uh community college, and then at a certain time it kicked off that I was like, you know what, I'm gonna be a cop.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: I was working in the jail at Carrollton PD at the time, and uh I said, you know what, I'm uh I'm gonna go on this journey because I want to do something to give back.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh prior to me and Rachel meeting, good old Vista Ridge Mall up in Louisville.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well, when I was a young man, uh I thought, you know, you had a good pair of Jordans, some oak leys, and a little bit of cash.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: You thought you were a hot thing walking around the mall.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: Well, lo and behold, I come out one day with my brother, and uh some individuals decided that they needed our oakleys and our shoes more than us.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: So I got held at gunpoint as well as my brother at the truck when we were trying to get in.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: They slammed the door on our legs and uh took our stuff and then decided they would leave us the truck, but threw the keys and left.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: And uh we went into loss prevention, talked to them, and they tried to get Louisville there, but never caught those guys.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: How old were you when that happened?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_03: 14.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, damn.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so at that point, you know, you know, it's a little bit of a traumatic event to go through, um, but I chose at that point, you know, I'm not gonna be a victim anymore.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm also gonna do my part to help those that become victims the best way I can.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: And uh kind of my way to get back was to get into law enforcement, you know, do something for the community versus just sitting back and watching things unfold.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_04: So it was at that moment you realized I may I may have a law enforcement career on the horizon?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: Pretty much.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it didn't help.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: I watched chips my whole life growing up as a kid.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I was like, okay, these guys are badass riding these motorcycles.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: I want to do that one day, you know, baker and paunch, you know.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's everybody getting on the highway, two man rolling.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_06: Did you ever get the Jordans?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_06: I I I can't, I'm gonna watch this episode back and wonder that.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_06: Did you ever get the pair of Jordans back?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_06: Like, did you ever buy the Jordans again?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_03: Gave up the Jason.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_04: Been in boots ever since Christmas present.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like if we can bow out two motor jocks on here, I'm afraid you are gonna start salivating and talk pulling out your boots.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_06: And there's a lot to talk about with motors.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, certain shit we do that you just can't talk about.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, some stuff's off the record.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_06: I'll bow out.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_06: That's awesome.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_06: How how how do you feel like working in the jail uh at Carrollton?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_06: Did it did it improve your work ethic as a cop, as a street cop?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: I think it did because it gives you a taste of what you're gonna deal with and a different perspective.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: You're still dealing with the same people that are coming off the street, but you're taking them over from the officers at the jail, and then you've got to deal with their housing, getting them through the court processing system to be arraigned, and then releasing them or sending them down to Dallas County on a transfer, you know.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: So it gave me an idea of some of the type of people I'm gonna run across or deal with or interact with.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that gives you a different um perspective and skill set absolutely on how to talk and deal with these people.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: Because as a jailer, you don't have nothing.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: All you all you got is a pair of handcuffs.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, it's that that in your mouth.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's it.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's verbal judo one-on-one.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, you got to figure a way to sweet talk these people into doing what you want to do.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, you as an officer, you get to drop them off and drop them off and leave them.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_04: You can pee up.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_04: You're stuck with them in the jail.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you you better find a way to get along or work with them or navigate how to do that.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because most of the time, you know, there were those ones that the poop magnets, they bring in their golden treasure and kick it out at the door and say, See ya, here's his booking sheet and gone.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: And he's amped up and just holy terror.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: But we got through.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_06: That's what sparked your your interest in law enforcement was basically being a victim of a robbery and you at that point.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_06: And also watching chips and the law enforcement, you know, TV series, which I think we need to have more of to spark up interest.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_06: But you're at Carolton, and then what what kind of moved you into where you work now?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: So, really, I'd put out apps when I was working in the jail to several different places, and Dart snagged me up first.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's what it boiled down to.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, at the time, Carolton was on the uh you had to have your bachelor's degree.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: They wanted, you know, somebody with degrees, otherwise you weren't gonna get in the process.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I was still going to junior college, so I hadn't finished that.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: And the chief said, You ever get a degree, you can come back.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_03: But I can't do nothing until then.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: Which he was good people.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_04: How long did you work in the jail?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_04: About two years.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_04: Two years and then transition.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_04: And for our listeners, Dart is Dallas area rapid transit.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_04: They have a huge uh transit police department.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_04: What y'all sworn roughly?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: Roughly we're around 220-ish right now.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we're trying to we definitely need at least 100 more.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, at the time when I started, you know, we maybe had 120 officers, if that.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_06: But they went through a big hiring punch back in the 2000, probably three, two, what what year do they kind of start tapering off?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, well, to early 2000s.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: That was early 2000s, probably 07, 09.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: We kind of tapered off a little.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I got snagged up in 04.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and you know, the thing that did impress me is the investigator that was doing my background actually came up to the jail and met me in the office in the lobby.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, Hey, I just want to go over everything real quick, make sure we're squared away, and then uh we'll set up the next pro next steps for you.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: You'll come down and meet with the chief and do your board interview and go from there.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so part of me was like, Okay, this is awesome because at the time they had 30 plus motor jocks.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: So I was like, okay, this is a shoe-in.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: I got a good chance that they got 30 spots for guys riding bikes.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um but then the other process was that I wasn't confined to one city, which I thought was cool because we service 13 cities, six counties, and that means that I can go work in Farmers Branch one day if I want to and see my family on the while I'm in the cruiser, or I can go out and get into the worst of the worst if I wanted to, just depending on what city I wanted to go play in.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, dive off into what a Dart, what a typical DART shift would look like for a Dart police officer, just kind of an overview.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_06: Because some people may not know.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: So in the early days when I started, you know, we had elements that were on trains and they rode sectors of trains.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: So you would get on a train at a certain beat, basically, is what they were calling sectors back then.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_06: In uniform.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: In uniform, and you'd ride the train back and forth in that area and deal with whoever got on the train.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: Now, our patrol units would go check the stations, satellite parking, uh, remote bus stop areas, and then travel the bus routes, which the cool thing was is curb-to-curb jurisdiction.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: Anything that the Dart bus goes down, it's fair game.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, back in the day I'd go play out in Garland because I knew their guys like to kick butt and take names.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I knew at least, worst case I get into some crap over there, I got backup.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_06: There's like there's a sense of joy and pride right now as he's wearing the Garland shirt on.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I see wearing the GPD shirt.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_04: Garland shirt on.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's right.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_06: Yep.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_04: We were always sensitive.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_04: No, anyway, yeah.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_04: First class service to the club.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's right.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_04: So you knew from the jump when you got hired at Dart, you knew motors was That was my goal.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_04: That was your goal.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: That was my first goal getting in after I got in.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I worked deep nights first three, four years, you know, and then so I started in 04, got picked up on the motors in 07 is when I went to motor school.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I did three years, roughly most of that was deep nights or evening patrol.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: Had a great time on evenings and deep nights, learned a lot.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: You know, back then on deeps, we rolled South Dallas.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: We rolled Oak Cliff, we rolled Pleasant Grove, you know.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: We were in the hot and heavy of it, and the Dallas guys, we bless their hearts, you know, they were always there to back us up because on our deep night schedule, there's three of us all of South.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know, so wow.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so we're covering basically south of 30 from loop 12 Grand Prairie area all the way back around to Pleasant Grove and Balch Springs, all the way down past 20.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_06: That's crazy.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: Good Lord.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but you know, we had a good sergeant and an awesome corporal, and we kicked butt and took names, you know, and we stuck together.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: We decided we'd go work an area and hit it hot and heavy.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't unusual to get three or four arrests before, you know, the end of shift.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: And just knock it out.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: So those were darn good times.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: I loved it.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um it took a lot to give up the phone on deep nights on patrol to go to motors, but once I got to motors, it it was my niche and I loved it.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um stayed there until uh 2016.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_03: I'd made the choice because we were having our littles, um, Charlie and Miranda.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, I was like, you know what, I need to be home more for the kids to support her and the kids, and I don't want to miss out on events.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_03: So that's kind of when I transitioned and uh took the uh detectives interview and test for uh to try and move out of uh motors and go inside.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: Work kind of a Monday through Friday schedule, even though detectives were on rotation for on call, but it at least gave me a better chance of having opportunities to not miss out on events for the kids as they got older into school.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: So but then you know, 2016 kind of changed.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we had a lot go on in July.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_03: We had 7-7.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we lost our first officer from the agency, Brent Thompson.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um that that took a lot out of our department being so small, but it was a it was a big thing to go through.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um me and uh quite a few of my partners, we were down there that night.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: We got there as fast as we could, you know, we worked perimeters, set up areas.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um going through that changes you, especially something that tragic and that big of an event.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, three months later we were all compartmentalizing and dealing with it the way we felt we could.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then that's uh when I had my vehicular accident while I was on duty, and uh from there destiny changed, you know.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: And and a different chapter was open.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: But I don't regret going through it.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's terrible, it sucks.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: What what happened, and I know we'll dive off into that, but um out of that, so many great things have happened out of one tragic event.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_03: So I I don't take that as any type of punishment or anything.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: I take it as a you know, maybe it's my new purpose.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: I've been given a second chance, now you're gonna make good on it.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um it brought me back to my faith when I drifted away, you know, because working and dealing with the people we do in our profession, all you see is dark and bad.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: You don't see the light and the good.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh it helped me get back to being a godly man.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, at the end of the day, and that's what I needed to be for my family anyways.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: And grounding myself there, then my family, and then what I needed to do helped me in the long run.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's got me where I could sit here with you guys today.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's got me where that woman right there will always be in my by my side and in my corner.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm grateful for that.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_04: So the Dallas five were killed 7-7.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_04: Your wreck was 10-10.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_04: 10-10, so three months later.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_04: So prior to that, Dart was becoming an old an older tenured agency, had been around a good while.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_04: Dart had not had huge tragedy, significant tragedy, and y'all to have two huge incidents like that back to back.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_04: That was a rough ass period for Dart.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: And y'all are a tight agency.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: We are, we're small family net group.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody's got their groups within that, but you know, Dart, we start the department started in 1989 with a retired DPD guy coming over, wearing a blazer with a six-shot revolver under his coat, riding buses back in the day when it was Dallas Transit.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: And he grew it into what he could.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_03: And then the 90s, 2000s, um, he was working on his way out.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: We had another chief come in, uh, Chief Spiller, um, who was the chief at the time of my incident and 7-7.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_03: And uh yeah, but for us to go through pretty two horrific incidents back to back was was a big blow to the agency.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, and afterwards, when I talked to my chief, he's like, I just couldn't lose another.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'd already we hadn't even figured out how to deal with the first one, and I was so terrified I was gonna lose another, I didn't know how to deal with it.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_03: And to hear that from the number one, you know, and he had my back the whole way.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: Great guy, took care of me, did me right.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_04: You know, and what was crazy, Brent Thompson, uh, the Dart officer killed the night the Dallas Five were killed.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_04: Brent was an extremely popular, very well-liked guy.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_04: Justin was an extremely popular, very well-liked guy in the agency.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_04: And three months apart, because when I got the call, I was told uh Justin went down, is not gonna make it.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_04: And so my mindset from the get-go was they're just basically I'm waiting on a phone call for them to call back and say you didn't make it.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_04: And that was the temperature with everybody from Dart that was calling me.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_04: And so Dart was gonna lose two extremely well-liked popular guys in a period of three months.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_04: And how to deal with that.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it it it definitely rocked the boat way more uh than anybody expected, you know.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we still had people in counseling trying to work through stuff over Brent.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, we we were growing, even though we were going through that transition of the first loss, it was growing and it was changing and tearing the department apart at the same time.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: So it was real weird.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um but so tell us about 1010.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_04: You were on duty riding motors.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so 1010, uh, I'm working southeast because we were still working patrol beats.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_03: At that time, uh motors had gone away from working the HOV lanes because we gave up a contract on that project with the uh county and the state through Text Hot.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: And uh County ended up taking it over, Sheriff Deputies.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: So at that time the chief said, let's transition motors into our patrol squads, and I want them to do traffic saturations, back up the patrol units, you know, because they can get through and get to stations and get to places other people can on them bikes.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, y'all but y'all didn't rotate like patrol, like day, you know, primary days, right?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I was on evenings, so I was working two to midnight.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow, yeah, so we're working tens, um, which we kind of did away with the deep nights on motors.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we never had motors on deeps, so traditionally we would work daylight hours, you know, right.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: Come in at six, work six to three, or you know, work an evening shift, but you're off the off the lanes by eight, so you're inside before it's dark.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and the whole purpose was to keep the motors out from not being out so late where you're not visible.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, were y'all still Harley's at the time?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: So when I started, we were on KZ 1000s, greatest freaking motorcycle, known to man, for work.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that thing was a beast.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: Take a lick in and keep on ticking.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we transitioned to Harley's.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I had a 2016 after a few years being on uh the motors, and I'm a big Harley guy, anyways, but for work, it's a big bike to throw around versus a KZ.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: But it it's way more comfortable in the long run.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I rode that bike for several years, took it over 100,000 miles on patrol.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: Good lord.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: And then so we retired those.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: I think mine left with 105,000 when it got retired, and we got um well, I'm sorry, that was our 09, and then I got the 2016, and the bike I was riding that night had not even made its first oil change when I totaled it.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow, so it had about 3,000 miles.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: We were trying to get it up to five after the break-in procedures.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_06: Um but so for the listeners that don't know, there's a break on Harley's, you have to have a 1,000.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_06: It there's two stages.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_06: There's a 1,000 mile mark, or actually, there's a 500, yeah the 500-mile break-in, and then there's the first oil change.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_06: And uh different depending on what agency you get to go to, sometimes it's kind of a screw-off mission with some motor uh guys will get to load up and they'll just take off and they'll they'll get to ride until this break-in period you know is over, and you can't apply the lights to it.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, so the good thing was for us is we broke them in even though they were fully upfitted, but we weren't riding them to their full capabilities.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: So we got past the break-in procedures.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: We had these things lit up like Christmas trees.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_03: It was the best lighting package I've ever seen.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: I was so proud of it because we were involved, uh, a couple of us on the motor jock team.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_06: And you guys working evenings, you need it.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and that was our thing, is we wanted uh at that time, God, they transitioned to where you could have uh white spotlights basically instead of just your red and blues with a different function on the lighting.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: And uh so we had that so we could light it up at night when we're riding around because now we're working evenings into the dark.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um and we tried to make it a goal to leave our beats about 10:30, 11, go and do paperwork that we were not out terribly late.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: But um interior street riding is different than riding highway all day.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: I can tell you that.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, being on the HOV lanes, I rode up there forever, you know, four or five years before we went to this interior street um patrol method.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and when I was on the highway, I never worried about anything working one of the worst highways in the state.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you got 635, 75, and 35, and I worked the north beat on uh HOV lanes, and I knew there was only two ways it's gonna get me, east or westbound.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: And it's gotta be a tire or something.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: But you knew when you were sitting up on that highway, you're good.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: Interior streets, it's 360, and you never know what's gonna come at you from what angle.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and I kind of jokingly talked to her the week prior to my wreck.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: I'd been in Pleasant Grove, same area I was working the night of my incident, and a car came over, never saw me, just merged up on top of me.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: I'm hitting the air horn.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: He don't care.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_03: Not a care in the world.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: So lucky for me, the medians in that area are not the greatest.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I had a grass entryway to the center median.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I hit it and went up on the median, came back down, pulled him over.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I told her, I was like, you know what, maybe it's good, I'm gonna be a detective, because I've been this is getting a little sketchy riding these interior streets.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's just not, you know, my cup of tea.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I was very cautious.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'd been on motors so long and actually gotten quite a few awards from winning some of our internal motors competitions that we had every year.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not like I was a below average rider.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um my chief thought highly of my riding capabilities, more than I feel uh humbled to share, you know, which He was one of the best riders on the squad.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_08: And I think that was why it hit so hard.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_08: Um When he had the accident, um, after Brent, like you said, he was one of the well-liked officers.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_08: So it didn't just hit the department, it really hit the squad.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_08: Um the motor squad took a really big hit.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, when one of your best riders goes down as bad as he went down, it makes it really hard for everybody else to want to get back on that motorcycle.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, yeah.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_08: Um if one of your top riders can get hit like that and go down like that, um, it it makes it really hard.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_08: So a lot of them, even to this day, haven't gotten over it.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: But, you know, diving off into that night, I'm gonna use Tyler's word.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna dive.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: I got you.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: I don't like Delve.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_08: Delve.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: Delve sounds like something from King of the Hills.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's right.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_03: But uh, you know, me and my partner work in Southeast, Pleasant Grove.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he's uh Chris Cobb, damn good friend, uh, damn good partner.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_03: Me and him, I mean, he was a poop magnet, but we were having fun because I was like, man, I'm having like my patrol deep night days with this guy.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_03: Even though I'm on a motor and he's in a cage, we're we're having a heck of a lot of fun popping some of these uh And just for clarification, you've got like weeks before you get transferred to CID.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: One week.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: One week.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: So this is during the state fair at the same time.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_03: So at that time it was in the new schedule and the deployment was not going to change until after our fair.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: So we had to work through the state fair and get that project done.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: Then they would go to the new deployment and I would have gone into CID.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I had one week left for the state fair to be over, and then I would have started that following Monday in the office.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_03: Gotcha.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're working southeast, we get a stabbing call.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: Me and him are separate, we're on both different ends of the beat.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: He says, Hey, I'm going to the victim.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_03: They said the guy got on a train going south.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: So I haul butt and I get down.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_03: One station down from him is actually where I'm at.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: Train comes in, nobody matching description.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm up there.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: I can find a little blood on the platform.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: Unknown if it was related to our incident or not.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: Basically, clear that scene.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: We ain't gonna find the suspect at this point.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, he's still out with the victim with DFD, DFR.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they got the ambulance out there, they're gonna transport her.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: And uh basically I get on the motor and I'm cruising back up to get to my partner because I don't want him solo.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_03: You know, what if this group comes back acting a fool?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: And uh doing the post-speed limit, nothing crazy.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_03: You know, motors we always travel, you know, 5'10 over.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: We'd clip a little faster than most, but at this time I was doing about 45 uh going up sine to my partner, and you know, I see this car coming southbound at me, and he dives off into the center turn lane.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_03: I see the front end go down, I see the headlights come back up.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm like, okay, he's breaking, he stopped.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: I'm good to go.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: I get back on the throttle, and we just left a red light.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I had a pack of cars behind me, and I'm in the left lane closest center median, and I kid you not, I maybe 10, 15 yards from him, he pulls right out.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, what the heck?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: So of course there ain't no emergency braking gonna stop me.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I do an evasive, uh do a hard evasive to the right, I cross over the dotted line between the lanes into the middle part of the center lane, and he's coming and he's not stopping.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, at that time I knew I was gonna hit that truck.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Okay.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: I closed my eyes and said, Lord help me.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: I left it in his hands.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh hit dead center of the engine block, um, and I felt myself in the air.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: For prayers and support from the public tonight for a Dart officer critically injured when his motorcycle was hit by a driver who ran a red light.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: CBS 11 News has just learned Officer Justin Ellis has taken a turn for the worst and may not survive.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: JD Miles joins us live.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: He's outside Baylor Hospital tonight.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: These smiling, happy photos of Justin Ellis, his wife, and two small children were taken within the past few weeks at Rangers Games and at a motorcycle rodeo.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: The Ellis family now keeps a heartbreaking vigil at the Dart Officer's Hospital bedside here at Baylor.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Friends say the 35-year-old is experiencing brain swelling that may take his life.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Police say he was responding to a call for help at a Fair Park Dart Station when his motorcycle was struck at an intersection by a driver that ran a red light.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Family friends say they are not giving up hope.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think anytime you have such a trauma like this one, I think, you know, it's common for things to just come up.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um we're just kind of taking it day by day and just hoping for the best.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, he's a fighter, so he we have no doubt that he's gonna get through this just fine.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: Uh land about probably 25 yards past his truck in the roadway.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'm on my back.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: I open my eyes.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: Never felt like I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, felt like somebody just set me down on the ground.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I just I leave that to divine intervention.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: Because I open my eyes and I look up and I see the moon and I'm like, I look back to my left.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: His truck's got all the cars stopped because of our wreck.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: So nobody's driving up on me, gonna hit me with a car.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_03: That was my second fear.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh I can't get to my shoulder mic, but as I try to sit up to get out of the off the ground, everything below my duty belt will not function.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: My left leg is perfectly flat on the ground, my right leg is hiked up in the air, just propped up on its own without my ability to have any control over it.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, yep, something's not right, bro.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: I lay back down.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_03: About that time, a citizen came up, and she was just mortified, trying to figure out what was going on.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: I said, All I need is my radio.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_03: If you get me my radio, I'm good.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_03: And that lady uh she found my shoulder mic, helped me check out that I needed officer assist.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, at that time, I guess citizens were also calling in.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: So Dallas and us both had all of our motors working the fair because of traffic control.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, when it came through Dallas dispatch, they didn't know if it was a Dallas motor dock or a Dallas or Dart Motor Dock.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: So basically the whole cavalry was coming from Southeast, from Pleasant Grove, from the fair, everybody.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_03: And uh of course, my partner Cobb, her all agency assist, you know, officer down basically, and it was right around from his is maybe God a block from where he was, is where I was wrecked out.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: And uh he left that victim in the ambulance, came to me.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: As soon as he got to me and squeezed my hand, the curtains closed.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: It was black.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: I don't remember a thing from that point.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I'm fortunate that she kept an awesome uh log of events, which we'll go off into later.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: But uh my partner said that, you know, he grabbed a hold of me and he was like, Listen, I got you.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: And uh next thing you know, there's no ambulance because the ambulance is taking our victim for that area for DFD.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: So they're waiting on an ambulance from another house to come.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_03: Well, luckily on the engine was a lieutenant who just promoted.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_03: And she used to be over the medics before she got riding that engine.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: So she was there with a go bag and was actually able to trail try and help stabilize me some prior to the actual ambulance getting there.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: But when they loaded me, they they told my partner Cobb, they were like, We don't know if he's gonna make this.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know, it's good chance he's not making it.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: And meanwhile, we're working the fair, so you know traffic sucks already.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: Especially around Sain getting to Baylor uh hospital.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_03: And uh you know, it was just it was eerie for everybody on that scene because there were Dallas jocks and my guys, and we all worked together and known each other.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_03: But I will commend my brothers and I love them to death.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_03: The paramedics told me after we talked when I got out of the hospital, uh, I wanted to meet the medics that transported me.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: That was one of my things to tell them thank you.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_03: And uh they were like, dude, we have never gotten to the hospital faster than when them motor jocks were driving us and leading us.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, Well, that's what we do, man.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's just us.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_03: We yeah, and the beauty of it was is that thank God Dallas motor jocks were called.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_03: Because the lieutenant that was working and over uh the traffic control for the state fair shut down every exit gate so no traffic could come out of the fairgrounds because he knew they were trying to transport us up.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so I was like, that's freaking awesome.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's what the brotherhood is.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: You you you pull all the stops out.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_06: But only a motorjock would have that mentality that for traffic aspects.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_06: You know, that's true.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_03: We're the only ones that click like that.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, it's just part of the weirdness of motorjock, but uh let me bow out.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'll go get something to eat.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_04: So you're go ahead.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_04: Rachel, how'd you get notified?
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_04: Were you home at work or so?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_08: My um my parents live on property with us.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_08: Um, we're on six acres out in Rockwall County, and my mom was a um UPS truck dispatcher, so she was at work.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_08: So my dad was home.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_08: I had literally just got home with our two small children from soccer practice.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_08: So I have them in the tub, and I was, you know, hot soccer mom mess trying to get them ready to get them in bed.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_08: Um, I am actually a private um charter dispatcher for flight dispatcher, and I actually had an international flight going at the same exact time that his accident happened.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_08: So I deal with people calling me all the time because the phones actually get transferred to my cell phone.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_08: So customs officers answer the phone just as you guys do.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_08: Um, officer so-and-so on the phone, you know.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_08: So when I answered the phone, I answered it for work because that's how I answer my phone 90% of the time.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and the person came across, I didn't recognize the phone number.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and the person came across this is officer so-and-so.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_08: And I didn't even click that it could be Justin or Dart or anything because he did not register himself as Dart.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_08: He didn't say, This is Dart officer so-and-so.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_08: It was literally just this is officer.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_08: And I was like, Oh, okay.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_08: And I literally went right into my flight, thinking that it was my flight.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_08: And he was a young officer, he was a rookie, and he kind of went into, you know, he stumbled over his words and he cut me off and he was like, No, no, no, no, no.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_08: You know, is this Mrs.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_08: Zeppelin?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_08: And I was like, Yes.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and he was like, Well, Justin, and everything froze as soon as he just had Justin's name.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and I was like, Well, what happened?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_08: And this is not our first incident.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_08: So Justin's had other incidents.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_08: Um, I've also had very bad calls um telling me about an incident when the the incident really wasn't that bad.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_08: So I tried to stay calm because I wasn't sure if this was really that bad of a phone call.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so I was like, okay, um, well, what's going on?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_08: And he just kept stumbling.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_08: He didn't know what to say, he didn't know how to really go into it.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_08: And I was like, can I talk to him?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_08: And he was like, No, you can't talk to him.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_08: And I was like, okay, can you please tell me what's going on?
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_08: And he literally couldn't get it out.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_08: So I was like, okay, fine, just tell me, is he alive?
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_08: Can you just tell me that?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_08: Is he alive?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_08: And all he could tell me was, I don't know.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_08: I didn't get a yes, I didn't get a no.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_08: I got an I don't know.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_08: Oh wow.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_08: Um and of course the first thing that came out of my mouth was, what the fuck do you mean you don't know?
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_08: Like, how do you not know?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_08: Is he breathing or not?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_08: Like, um, and he was like, ma'am, I'm so sorry.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_08: I just I I I I don't know.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so I hung up on him because I was getting nowhere.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so I I hung up on him.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_08: Um, I tried to recollect.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_08: I had my dad go in with the kids.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_08: I went into our bedroom and I started making phone calls.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_08: And I called all of the sergeants and higher up people that I had in my phone, and nobody knew what was going on.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_08: So I was completely lost.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_08: I called three people and all of them were, we we don't know, we just talked to him.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_08: He's fine, he's out on the scene.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_08: And I was like, I just got a call saying that they don't know if he's okay.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_08: So finally they were like, okay, well, they must be on a different channel, which obviously I don't know what the hell that means.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_08: Um, which is what ended up happening.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_08: They were all on different channels than what his incident was coming across on.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so they were like, let me find out what's going on and we'll we'll call you back.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_08: So I'm in a complete state of panic because I really don't, you know, if he's okay, if he's alive, I can calm down.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_08: But the fact that I didn't even know if he was alive, I didn't know what to do.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_08: So in between phone calls, my phone is blowing up and I got a call from a wife, a Dallas police officer that we're very close with.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_08: A Dallas police officer's wife called, and she was like, Hey, um, her husband was actually just coming off a shift and heading home.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_08: And she was like, he just called me and he said that um he doesn't know if it's Justin or not.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_08: And I was like, What do you mean?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_08: She was like, Well, there's uh there was an officer assist, you know, uh for a motor jock.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_08: And one of the guys called him and said that it's your friend, it's your buddy.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_08: Um and Justin was the only Dart officer he was close to um as far as a motor jock.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_08: So when when he said it's your buddy, they immediately knew it was Justin.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_08: And I said, I have no idea what's going on.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_08: I can't get anybody to call me.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_08: And he was like, Well, she said, Well, he's headed to the hospital now.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_08: And I said, Okay.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_08: So I finally got the call back that it was him.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_08: Again, they still had no idea what his condition was.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_08: They didn't know if he was alive.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_06: Did they say that he was involved in a wreck?
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, what did they say?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_08: That's all I got.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_08: Um, that he was involved in a motor accident uh with another vehicle, but they did not know his condition.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_08: That they had a car on the way to come get me.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_08: So out of all of these incidents we've ever had, I would say this is the one that you could tell.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_08: I had that feeling.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_08: Like I knew we're we're extremely close.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_08: Uh I knew I would feel it if he was gone.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_08: And I didn't feel that he was gone, but I knew something was really, really wrong.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so my dad called my mom, had her come home to be with the kids.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_08: Um the car showed up to get me.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_08: I will say, I know why y'all go through the driving techniques that y'all go to, because that was the scariest fucking drive I have ever been in in my entire life.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_08: I wasn't quite sure if I was gonna make it to the damn hospital.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_08: I was scared.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so we made it from Rockwall to Dallas, and I think in a matter of 10 minutes, which just should not happen.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_08: Which should not happen.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so we got there.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_08: And honestly, if anybody saw or was there during 7-7, um, you know, he was down there.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_08: And that was a pretty scary time.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_08: But I'm not one to react unless given reason to react.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_08: Um, I've been with him since we started this career.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_08: Um, I'm not one of the ones that panic and sit there and watch the TV and like freak out when there's a chase going on or whatever.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_08: Like, unless he calls me and tells me that there's a reason for me to freak out, I'm just not that one.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_08: So 7-7 was really hard and watching all of that and everything, but he was really good with communicating with me.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_08: So I knew he was okay that whole night.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_08: But the scene that you see on the TV of the entire emergency rooms being flooded with police cars and the lights was what I pulled up to.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_08: And it freaked me the hell out, honestly, because I mean I've never seen that many police cars in one place other than a funeral.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_08: So to pull into an emergency room, I mean, the ambulances couldn't even pull into the ambulance drive because there was nothing but police officers, nothing but cars.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_08: Um when I say it was a sea of blue, it was a sea of blue.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_05: That's awesome.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_08: Um, which I didn't expect so fast.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, he was still in the emergency room.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_08: So this had literally just happened within the hour.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_08: And the place was already flooded um with people.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_08: So I got out of the car and I go inside and I don't know what I'm walking into.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_08: And as soon as I walked through the emergency room doors, I can hear his dumbass swearing up a storm.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, which one?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_06: Justin or Glenn?
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_08: Just did.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, cussing and hollering and screaming, and I it was false hope, unfortunately.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_08: Um it everything came down a little for me.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_08: Because I was like, okay, he's alive.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_08: Like, because I didn't even know at that point if he was alive.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_08: So I was like, okay, he's alive, we're good.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_04: I recognize those cuss words.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_04: He's alive, yeah.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_08: He's alive.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's my baby.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so I was good.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so I walked into the the room and there was a couple officers around him, and and he there was really no visible blood.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_08: Like his arms were skinned up a little bit and he had a split lip.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_08: But besides that, there was no blood.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_08: So it's very, it was very deceiving.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_08: It was um, like I said, false hope.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_08: Um you really didn't realize how drastic and how bad the situation was.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_08: Um he doesn't remember any of that at all.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: One of my so my deep night sergeant when I was a rookie, he's the first sergeant I ever worked for, Barton Bushman.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_03: Freaking awesome dude.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: Best brother in the world.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: So this dude, I was his rookie.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: He taught me the ropes on patrol, and he was a former motor jock prior to promoting to sergeant.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_03: So I was just like, hey bro, how do I get to motors?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: What do I gotta do?
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_03: Took me under my under my wing, you know, took care of me.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: I made motors, he was happy.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then here it is.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_03: He was with one of our power squad sergeants when I worked that beat that night.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I just left dinner in Deep Elm with him.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, hey man, I'm gonna go snag this stabbing call with this patrol guy, go take care of him, see what's going on.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: Kill the knight, we'll be done.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: Well, he goes, dude, when I walked in that ER, your goofy ass is sitting up there cussing because they won't give you no pain medicine for your how you're hurting.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, but the whole time you're sitting up, they got you propped up, you're good.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_03: But every time they lay you down to check you, you start going low sick.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_03: So then they prop you back up.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: And this is all before Rachel gets there.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: They're doing this up-down BS trying to figure out what's going on.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_03: Long story short, in the end, I had two tears in my carotid artery in the left side of my hip.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm bleeding out.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_03: But when you prop me up, I had enough pressure to hold it where I wasn't going low six, and my blood pressure wasn't going up and down.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_03: But if you laid me flat, I was bleeding out internally.
• 42:33
  unknown: Wow.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_08: So when I got there, that's what was going on.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_08: Um, they were trying to stabilize him enough to get him back to surgery.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_08: Um at that time, they hadn't given him really anything for pain because they couldn't stabilize him.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_08: So they were waiting around.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_08: Um this is one I had a lot of run-ins with doctors during this whole incident.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_08: Um, I got a little testy with some, fired some.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_08: It was great.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so our wonderful egomaniac um Ortho came in and, you know, he did the whole test on Justin um with his legs and everything.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_08: Because at that point they had already figured out they had taken x-rays and they had figured out that he had an open book pelvic fracture, which the rates for these people to survive is almost none.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_08: Um he told me he shouldn't have made it on the ambulance.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_04: Open book, what is that?
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_08: Pelvic fracture.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_08: So your pelvic is kind of like a C and it's attached at one point.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_08: So when his what happened was so he hit the truck and he slid from the seat up the tank and his legs hooked the handlebars.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_08: And he continued going and his legs took a bit before that.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_08: Unlocked from the handlebars.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_08: So when that happened and he slammed into the handlebars and the rest of him kept going, it broke his pelvic pelvis open.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_08: So he was six inches displaced on one side and about 10 inches displaced on the other side.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_08: So instead of his pelvic looking like that, his pelvis looking like this, it was like this.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: God.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_03: So something I've learned about this wonderful thing called open book pelvic fracture.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_03: Mortality rate's like 89%.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_03: And the only other people who get it are helicopter pilots who crash land and belly it down because of the impact.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_03: So Bumsey, Baylor Medical, they were like, we've seen a few of these, but not like this is not common.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_08: They honestly didn't know how to handle it.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_08: Um so they they'd already figured out what was going on with him, and they knew that he was bleeding eternally.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_08: Um so another, they had a gunshot wound victim come in right around the same time as Justin coming in.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and the admitting doctor that was dealing with him had to go and deal with the gunshot.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_08: So another doctor got called down, uh, Dr.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_08: Foreman, and thank God he did.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_08: Um, he's actually the doctor that took care of all the seven, seven officers that came in, and he's absolutely amazing.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_08: But he came in and assessed what was going on with Justin.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_08: He was, he looked at me and he was like, Are you ready to run?
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_08: Um I was like, What are you talking about?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_08: And he was like, We don't have time.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_08: He has sat here too damn long.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_08: We've got to go.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_08: Um and prior, so prior to that was the ortho guy.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_08: He came in and he told me with his whole open book pelvic fracture that the chances of him walking were probably none.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_08: Um, he shouldn't even be alive.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_08: Um, that was my first throw-up moment.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_08: So I'm very good at holding everything in and not falling apart.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and when he said that, this was before Foreman showed up, I had gone outside.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and unfortunately for me, there was a dark bus station bus stop right outside of the ER, which y'all can imagine what happens at those damn benches.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, yeah.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_08: Um I think probably people in six counties overheard me scream.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_08: I screamed so damn loud and dry heaved for about 35 minutes um before I went back inside, pulled my shit back together.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and that's when Foreman showed up and and literally looked at me and asked me if I was ready to run.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_08: And I was just like, I I really don't know what I'm doing here.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_08: And he was like, Well, I'm gonna explain it, but we're going.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_08: And that was the next thing I know, we're running down the hallway.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_08: And I'm not talking walk in, I'm talking running.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and he was explaining to me what he was about to do to Justin and that this was his only shot.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_08: And if he made it through this, that we actually might have a shot of him making it.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_08: Um, but he was gonna be putting in a a coil to put his femoral artery um back together um to stop the bleeding.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_08: Um and if he made it through that, then we would deal with everything else.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_08: But the first thing was they had to get the bleeding to stop.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_08: Um so that was it.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_08: And he went into that.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_08: Um I still hadn't even it it everything happened so fast.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_05: Processed everything.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_08: Um, no.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, just the fact of knowing that it was, I mean, literally within 15 minutes, I thought he was pretty much fine to I'm running down a hallway, you know, being told he may not make it out.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_08: Um so he went through that surgery.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_08: Um, he made it through it just fine.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_08: They got him up to um ICU, and it was literally I was told every hour to prepare myself for probably a week and a half straight.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_08: Um it was we at that time Miranda had just turned two and Charles his birthday was that following Friday, five days after the accident.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_08: So our children were were essentially babies.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_08: Um we'd never been away from them.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_08: I felt like the worst mother in the world because I hadn't even thought about them.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_08: Like my focus was not on them, it was on him.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_08: Um I didn't I didn't leave the hospital for two and a half months.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_08: Um I stayed every single night at the hospital with him.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_08: Um I went home a couple times, you know, to to be with them and stuff like that.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_08: But for the most part, I was with Justin.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_08: Um which is still as a mother, that's a hard thing to to put your babies on the back burner.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_08: Um but I felt that you had to.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_08: I felt that I had to because his condition changed so rapidly from minute to minute.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_08: Um, I mean, he had surgery every other day.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_08: They kept him open.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_08: His abdomen was open for a month.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and they went in and did washout basically where they took everything out and washed him out and cleaned him all up and put it back in.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_08: And but his abdomen stayed open for a month.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so he was having surgery every day.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_08: We went from his kidneys failing to um he had a brain bleed to everything else going on with his abdomen, to we still hadn't fixed the pelvic fracture itself.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_08: Um he had a shattered foot from his foot being um, they say it was from him hitting the brake pedal that he slammed on that brake pedal so fucking hard that he broke his foot.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_08: Um so we had all of that to fix.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_08: And then um with his it was, I think it was Thursday.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_08: So four days into him being there is when we found the brain bleed.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_08: And they said it was not from the impact.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_08: We checked that helmet so many times.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_08: Um we had him bring it up there and we literally examined that helmet like nobody's business.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_08: How his head did not hit the ground, we have no freaking clue.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_08: But his head did not hit the ground.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_08: There was no cracks, there was no scuffs, there was nothing.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's interesting.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_03: So the only thing that was damaged on the helmet was one of the visor buttons, and that's when I hit the windshield clipping it, I think.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but we wore the three-quarter Shoei or a Rye is what I was wearing.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: You had the choice, but uh I think had I not been wearing that heavy duty of a three-quarter helmet versus like a half shell, half shell would have been done.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_03: It might have been a different story.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_08: But you know, so they say the brain weight bleed was from the stress of what everything his body was going through.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, yeah.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_08: So when that happened and his kidneys started failing and everything, um that was a huge turning point.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_08: Um up to that point, it was you know, touch and go, without a doubt.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_08: Um but that Thursday, four days in, was the turning point of Justin's probably not gonna make it.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_08: Um the doctors came in, all of them, um, and they said, We've done everything we can do.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_08: We don't know what else to do.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_08: He's getting worse.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_08: Um but we have a Hilmary.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_08: We have no idea if it's gonna work.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_08: It's never been done before.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and that was when ECMO was introduced.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_08: And ECMO is used more for pulmonary and heart patients.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_08: So it takes all of the blood out of your body, cleans it, and then puts the blood back into your body.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: But so the trick behind that, Ty, is that basically my blood was not filtering and cleaning itself.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_03: So it was poisoning me, basically, from inside.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I was having all the CO built up in me and it's not cleaning it up.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: So they run it through that machine, it filters it out and processes it like your body should, and then it pumps it back into you.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, you get these cool scars, you know, chicks dig scars is what I was told.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_06: So and at what point do you I know obviously the night, you don't remember the being the in in the in the ER.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_03: Dude, I don't I don't remember getting off the ground, being loaded in the ambulance, the stretcher.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_06: When is when is it kind of you wake back up and you in this horrible situation?
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_03: Thanksgiving.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_03: Thanksgiving week.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh like two days before Thanksgiving.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_03: So two months almost.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_03: Two months, yeah.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_03: I wake up in the uh rehab rehab center.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_03: Medically induced?
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_03: Medically induced coma.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was pain medicine.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_03: My body shot myself down to protect itself, is basically what they said.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't like they introduced any medicine to So they didn't have you medically induced coma.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_03: Nope.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_03: It was my body.
• 53:32
  unknown: Wow.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_03: And when I came through, I thought it had been years.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know what had happened.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I was like, and then I'm laying there in that bed and I'm terrified to move.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_03: Because I'm like, I don't know how bad I am.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_03: So the last thing I remember is my leg's not working.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_04: When you woke up in rehab, did you remember you had been in a wreck?
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_03: I faintly remembered I had a bad incident when I came to, she was sitting beside me.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um that was the most comforting thing.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh because I had no idea uh how long it been, what had happened.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_03: I had no idea what transpired.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um it was hard.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_03: I couldn't couldn't feed myself, couldn't barely talk.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um and it's like a whole new restart button hit because I had to learn things that a grown man should know.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_03: You know, uh at the time, the guy that was gonna be my CID partner, he came in and he was feeding me my Thanksgiving dinner at the rehab center uh for patient the outpatient thing at Tom Landry, and uh I couldn't feed myself because every time I tried to pick up a spoon, my arms were so weak I'd shake and lose all the food before I get it to me.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_04: It was a hot mess.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_04: So after two months, was it his eyes just open and his like the lights came on?
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_08: Or no, um, and that's why I said it was kind of it was his body shutting down to protect himself, but also there was it was a lot of pain medicine um involved to keep him comfortable because there for the longest, he was on probably four different types of pain medicine.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_08: Um, morphine and ketamine being the two um top ones, and they had some other stuff in there as well.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_08: Um he he was a problem child when it came to moving him.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_08: Um anytime they moved him or messed with him, it would take probably a good day and a half to get him stable again.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_08: Um, his body just didn't handle being touched and messed with.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_08: So once um once they started messing with the pain meds and trying to get him off of them is when you could start seeing some of him coming out.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_08: Um his eyes, when you would talk to him, his eyes would start moving.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_08: He had open his eyes.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_08: Um he didn't really, he had he was intubated most of the time that he was there.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so he couldn't talk or anything, but it was more the eyes.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_08: Um his eyes would would open up and he would move them around and stuff like that.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_08: And that was before we even got out of the ICU, um, is when that started.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_08: Um so, but actually knowing that he was, I would say, really understanding what you were saying, or that you were actually trying to have a conversation with him was probably after he was intubated.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_08: Um, or the intubation was taken out, and he actually had a trake put in.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and he was traked for probably two weeks.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_08: Um, the transition, it was about two weeks.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and he couldn't talk.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so just trying to get the sounds out and trying to learn how to talk again.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_08: Um, I would say that's when it really started because they were really kind of, I don't want to say forcing, but you know, they really try to persuade you to actually talk and make noise and stuff like that.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and that was when he was really starting to be a little bit more coherent um and and really with it, I guess you could say.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_06: And is that at that is that at that point that you kind of this is what happened?
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_08: Um so that time came, we were still in the ICU, and he had been, they had taken the intubation out and he was traked.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_08: Um and he really wanted to go outside.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_08: And that was the first time we'd gotten him out of the bed and put him in a um, it wasn't a regular wheelchair, it was a you know, much more intense, but it was a chair that he couldn't move, we would have to push him and stuff to get him outside.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_08: And that was that was when I think it it really hit.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_08: Um he had kind of hinted that he couldn't feel anything, but with him being so unstable, um, I didn't know how to broach the subject.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_05: Tune in next week for part two, where he discusses how a horrific accident leaving him paralyzed fuels his fire to give back to the Brotherhood Law Enforcement.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_08: From the beginning, TMPA was a huge, huge part of the whole ordeal.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_08: We are getting home to our kids for Christmas.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_03: Part of all of this that I've been through is finding your purpose.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_03: I've been given a second chance.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_03: I could have been liked out that night because we're all in this boat together.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_03: I don't care where you're at, where you're struggling.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's a phone call away to somebody.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_03: That's part of the brotherhood.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_07: Just