MILWAUKEE — A Good Samaritan was in the right place at the right time during Thursday’s shooting in Milwaukee’s Third Ward. An off-duty police officer intervened in an attempted carjacking outside the Shake Shack restaurant and was shot by the suspect. The officer was wounded and needed help.
A traveling nurse with more than a decade of experience in the medical field didn’t want to be identified, but told our sister station TMJ4 News her story.
She was arriving at the restaurant to pick up food she ordered, when she noticed the suspect and the officer struggling through the window.
“I hear a gunshot, everybody is screaming, jumping over the counters in Shake Shack, I duck down behind the car” she said.
She says she heard more gunshots and what she believes was the off-duty officer firing back at the suspect.
Then she saw the suspect run out the front door of the restaurant and pass the window where the officer was lying on the ground, wounded.
She says “the officer shot another bullet and it went through the glass and it missed the suspect.”
That’s when the suspect started firing back.
“As he’s running, just firing a whole bunch of shots in the air, out into the public, didn’t really care where they are going,” she said.
The woman says the suspect sped away in a waiting car, and she went into the restaurant to help the officer.
“I knew I had to do something, he’s just laying there and I could tell he’s bleeding, he’s got wounds, he’s suffering.”
She says the restaurant’s manager helped her attend to the wounded officer.
“He came and helped and he had all the employees take off their aprons. He was in the front, I was in the back. We were just trying to hold pressure.”
The entire time she was helping the officer, he was worried about getting the suspect's information to responding law enforcement.
“He knew I had to hold pressure on the wounds, he wanted me to pull my phone out so I could put all this in my notes," she said.
Paramedics and other officers eventually arrived to help, and the wounded officer was taken to the hospital.
She believes a higher power put her at that restaurant.
“It’s a sign for me that God’s telling me that (there) was a purpose for me, that it was something I was meant to do, that I was meant to be there.”
She also believes the officer that was off-duty and tried to stop the crime, deserves all the credit.
“He was absolutely amazing, completely the biggest hero I’ve ever seen,” she said.
