KNIGHTDALE -- A Wake County sheriff's deputy who escaped serious injury when his armored vest protected him during a shootout that killed a man in Wendell in November was hospitalized Saturday night after a car struck him during a traffic stop in Knightdale, officials said.
Deputy Jeff Martin was taken to a hospital for examination and then released, Wake sheriff's spokeswoman Phyllis Stephens said. Details of his injuries were not available. State troopers are investigating the accident, which happened shortly after 8 p.m. at Knightdale Boulevard and Acres of Space Boulevard.
In the November shooting, Martin's vest was hit, apparently by shotgun pellets, after he and other deputies responded to a call of a domestic dispute and assault at 208 Gail Ridge Lane in the Candlewick subdivision north of Wendell on Nov. 18. He was treated at WakeMed in Raleigh after that incident and released.
Mark David Zareski, 28, who was wounded by deputies who returned fire after he pinned them down outside his house, died at the same hospital where paramedics took Martin. The State Bureau of Investigation, which routinely handles officer-involved shootings, has been looking into the incident. Zareski's wife had run to a neighbor's house after being beaten, deputies said, and he called 911.
Stephens said Martin had been making a routine traffic stop, a time when law enforcement officers in most jurisdictions usually radio information about the vehicle they are stopping and their location, but not their reason for deciding to stop it. Details of how Martin was hit were not immediately available from the Highway Patrol.
Martin has been a deputy for four years.
Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison said today that the danger of being on foot along a road during a stop "is part of what every law enforcement officer faces every day." The risks to police, Harrison noted, are why North Carolina enacted the "Move Over Law" in 2002.
The statute requires drivers to move one lane over on multilane highways or to slow down on two-lane roads when they encounter an emergency vehicle on the shoulder with its lights flashing or utility-company vehicles with flashing amber lights after a major event such as an ice storm or hurricane.
