MOUNT VERNON — For more than an hour Saturday morning, Morrow County Sheriff’s Deputy Brandon Moore enthralled the attendees of the annual Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast with the account of his near-fatal wounding on Sept. 21, 2010.
He described how the situation arose that led to the shooting and, with brutal honesty, described the “laziness and complacency” that caused him to be caught outside his cruiser with no reloads for his sidearm and without a radio to call for help.
Having originally gone to the scene to simply keep the peace between a farmer and a man Moore described as “the neighborhood bully” in a dispute over use of a driveway to access a field, Moore said he was told the man was growing marijuana behind a privacy fence in his back yard.
After having tried to see what was behind the fence by climbing to the top of a nearby silo, he drove his cruiser into a field and was walking to where he thought he might be able to see around the fence, when he heard the crack of a rifle shot and realized he was the target.
He headed for the cruiser, but went down after being hit multiple times, luckily falling where the cruiser wheels provided him some protection.
One bullet had shattered his femur, another the large metatarsal in his left foot. One had split his scrotum and another had penetrated his kevlar vest, shattered a rib and sent fragments into the spleen.
Moore was able to fire back and managed to hit the shooter (who had once attended the police academy and was also wearing a vest) before running out of ammunition.
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