Injured Gadsden County Sheriff’s Deputy is released from hospital, a parade escorts him home
Law enforcement officers and emergency response personnel from several local and state agencies came to attention outside the doors of the MT Mustian Center in Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare on Sunday afternoon.
They waited nearly two hours to greet their comrade – Gadsden County Sheriff’s Deputy Chicara Hearns – as she left the hospital with a ‘career criminal’ bullet still stuck in her afterward. his five-day stay.
Hearns had tears in her eyes when her wheelchair was pushed over the threshold of the hospital and she saw the line of colleagues there to support her and she got into her mother’s car on her own means.
As she left the hospital, Lt. Anglie Holmes, spokesperson for the Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office, streamed live on Facebook, the video attracting 26,000 viewers across the country.
Pass:
She and her mother were escorted from the hospital to their home in Havana by more than a dozen law enforcement and emergency vehicles.
She was gunned down on the job last week along an isolated stretch of Jamieson Road in northern Gadsden County.
Hearns came across a stolen truck that she and other police officers were trying to find. Police said the man behind the wheel was Dexter Lawson, a 38-year-old felon from Quincy.
“She noticed it,” said Lt. Anglie Holmes, spokesperson for the Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office. “He was heading in her direction and just hit her head on and stuck her in a ditch. (He) came out and opened fire on her.
Lawson fired three shots, two of which were stopped by Hearns’ bulletproof vest and another hitting her, Sheriff Morris Young said at a press conference on Wednesday. He’s missed all of her major organs but stays in her, Young said. Doctors hope to remove it later.
“She’s doing great,” Holmes said on Sunday. “She stopped taking her pain medication on Friday morning – she said she didn’t want them anymore. And then she started therapy and left the intensive care unit yesterday to go to a regular room.”
Holmes said Hearns will continue with physical therapy and it will take some time before she is ready to return to work.
“She’s fine,” she said. “Surprisingly good.”
Earlier in the week, Robert and Melody Rodriguez, the couple who helped Hearns after she crawled out of her injured patrol car, were recognized by Young.
“Sheriff Young called the Rodriguez ‘Angels and Heroes who did what he thought many citizens would have done,” the sheriff’s office said in an email. The Rodriguez shared that they gave Deputy Hearns an angel figurine months ago after she helped their daughter through a rough patch and believe the angel protected her while the incident was taking place right outside their house. “
Contact Tori Lynn Schneider at [email protected] or on Twitter @photoriphy. Check out her photos on Instagram @phototori_.
Never miss a story: Subscribe to the Tallahassee Democrat using the link at the top of the page.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Gadsden County Sheriff’s Deputy Chicara Hearns discharged from hospital