Nurse: ‘I knew I had to help’ when a North Carolina trooper was shot in the face
Just after 5 p.m. Monday, authorities say, a suspect shot North Carolina Highway Patrol Trooper Daniel Harrell in the face and fled.
Sherice Richardson, a nurse, said she was on her way to pick up her son from daycare when she found the trooper, his car mangled, bleeding from the head. “I could not believe my eyes. This car was smoking with bullet holes in the windshield,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
“The officer was bleeding from his face & I knew I had to help him. I just had to stay with him until EMS arrived to take over,” she wrote.
By midnight that night, police arrested three men in connection to the shooting. John David Jones, 26, faces attempted murder charges and numerous others. William Allen Boswell, 40, and Bryan Jeffrey Mullins, 25, who police say were in the car at the time, each face one county of possession of a stolen motor vehicle, jail records show.
The three had their first court appearances Tuesday, according to the Wilson Times. Jones is being held on a $1 million bond and a judge set $15,000 bonds for Mullins and Boswell, the newspaper reports.
After Trooper Harrell was shot in the face, he “chased down his alleged assailant resulting in a head-on crash that sent the suspect running from the scene,” according to the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office, the Wilson Times reports.
That crash was the scene Richardson found outside Wilson.
“This is somebody’s son, brother, dad, uncle, etc... & he didn’t deserve to be shot like this trying to do his job. I watched my brother lay on concrete lifeless in hopes that he would get a second chance,” she wrote.
“I couldn’t just let nobody sit there and let him bleed,” Richardson, 28, told WRAL. “Me being the person I am, and being a nurse, I couldn’t do that.”
“Richardson asked Harrell if he was OK and immediately called 911. While she waited for emergency responders, Richardson said she and another driver helped stop Harrell’s bleeding until paramedics arrived a few minutes later,” WRAL writes.
The trooper has serious injuries but they are not life threatening, the Rocky Mount Telegram reports. He is at Vidant Medical Center in Greenville, according to the newspaper.
Harrell is a third-generation officer with the North Carolina Highway Patrol. His grandfather T.C. Cherry, who retired from the Highway Patrol in 1985, told WNCN, “I just thank the Lord that he didn’t get hurt no worse than he did,”
“In this day and age, you’ve got to be expecting it any time,” he told the station.
For her part, Richardson wrote, “I pray this man pulls through with a full recovery & I pray they fry the man behind the gun. This was definitely a life changing experience for me.”
This story was originally published January 16, 2019 at 9:27 AM.
