Yeardley:  Hey, Small Town Fam, it’s Yeardley. Guess what? For the first time ever, we’re taking our show on the road. That’s right, Small Town Dicks Live is coming to six cities in February 2025. So, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles, we’re headed your way. Tickets are on sale right now at smalltowndicks.com/tour. That’s smalltowndicks.com/tour. This is going to be so much fun. We can’t wait to see you out there, Small Town Fam. You guys are the best.

[music]

 Hey Small Town fam, it’s Yeardley. I want to remind you that if you want access to bonus episodes and regular episodes a day early and ad free and our community forum and other behind-the-scenes goodies, you got to go to smalltowndick.com/superfam and then in the top right-hand corner, hit that little tab that says join. And then listen to the end of today’s episode for a sneak peek at today’s new bonus episode.

 Hey, Small Town Fam, it’s Yeardley. How are you guys? Where are you guys? I hope all is well in your world. We bring you a fascinating, harrowing episode today and it wraps up Season 15. Usually, the guests we have on this podcast are the third party in the story as in they get pulled into the investigation after the main event and then it’s their job to gather up the pieces of the puzzle and assemble them so that justice can be served.

 In today’s episode, our guest, Trooper Dean is the main event. His day starts off as another day in the life of a state trooper. Dean loves his job and he takes it very seriously. So, on this day, before he starts his shift, Dean hears a call go out on the radio about an eviction notice being served that is not going well. He asks if the officers on duty need additional backup. They say no. So, Dean waits until his shift begins to start his day. And by the time he gets in his patrol car, the situation appears to be resolved. So, Dean goes to work, and as he’s getting ready to go on his dinner break, a car speeds past him one of the main roads in his city. They’re going at least 50 miles over the speed limit and it’s not a highway, so Dean prepares to make a traffic stop.

 If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, then you’ll remember that Dan and Dave have said many times there is no such thing as a routine traffic stop. Dean’s story, this episode, is every cop’s and the family of that cop’s worst nightmare. However, it could also be said that there is no limit to what the human spirit is capable of when someone has tried to kill you but you refuse to die, here is Hell Bent.

Yeardley:  Hi there. I’m Yeardley.

Dan:  I’m Dan.

Dave:  I’m Dave.

Paul:  And I’m Paul.

Yeardley:  And this is Small Town Dicks.

Dan:  Dave and I are identical twins-

Dave:  -And retired detectives from Small Town USA.

Paul:  And I’m a veteran cold case investigator who helped catch the Golden State Killer using a revolutionary DNA tool.

Dan:  Between the three of us, we’ve investigated thousands of crimes, from petty theft to sexual assault, child abuse to murder.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Dave:  Each case we cover is told by the detective who investigated it, offering a rare personal account of how they solved the crime.

Paul:  Names, places and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of victims and their families.

Dan:  And although we’re aware that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we ask you to please join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved-

Dave:  -out of respect for what they’ve been through.

[unison]:  Thank you.

[Small Town Dicks Theme]

Yeardley:  Today on Small Town Dicks, my friends, we have the usual suspects. We have Detective Dan.

Dan:  Hello there.

Yeardley:  Hello. So happy you’re sitting actually across the table from me today.

Dan:  So am I.

Yeardley:  Yeah. Not just in some amorphous Zoom room.

Dan:  Yes.

Yeardley:  We have Detective Dave.

Dave:  I am here as well.

Yeardley:  You are here, but you’re not across the table from me and that’s sadness.

Dan:  Smells way better in this room.

Yeardley:  Shut up Dan. And of course, we have the one and only Paul Holes.

Paul:  I’m coming from Colorado. How’s it going?

Yeardley:  It’s true. You’re also not sitting across the table from me. I have sadness mixed with joy because my husband is here. And Small Town Fam, we are so pleased to welcome a new guest to the podcast today, Trooper Dean.

Trooper Dean:  How’s it going everybody?

Yeardley:  Hey, Dean. So happy to have you. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Trooper Dean:  Thank you for having me.

Yeardley:  So, Dean, we’re really humbled and delighted to host you today because you bring us a quite– Well I would say quite different kind of case than we usually tell on this podcast. I’ll preface it by saying longtime listeners know that one of the things that we have done a lot on this podcast is talk about the mental health aspect of first responder jobs such as being in law enforcement, encountering people on their worst day, and over the course of that journey, there is a real tail, T-A-I-L to that kind of work. And the experience you’re bringing us today really puts that into perspective. So, I’m going to hand it over to you. Tell us about this day.

Trooper Dean:  So it was on September 22nd, 2022. It all kind of started while I was off duty. I saw it on Facebook that there was an eviction/bomb threat happening somewhere in my town. But I didn’t really pay attention to it because it was like 11ish in the morning. The shift I was supposed to be working that day was night shift, which starts at 02:00 PM and runs till midnight. So, kind of went about my day and got ready to sign in service and noticed that other troopers and other law enforcement were still at this eviction/bomb threat call.

 So, I called one of my coworkers there and said, “Hey, you know, I’m signing in service. What do you need from me?” Essentially, he just said, “We’re clearing out of here, not a big deal, just go about your day and we’ll clean up on our end. Don’t worry about it.” So that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t really look into the call at all, kind of disregarded it and went about my day. And I was just on routine patrol for Washington State Patrol guys. Our big bread and butter is traffic enforcement, collisions, and DUI stuff is kind of our big three that we handle. So that’s pretty much what I did. I went up to our highways and stopped a few cars throughout the day.

 And a little bit before 05:00, I think the actual time is like 05:07 when this incident happened. I was just driving down one of our main roads and I observed a car in the left lane. It’s a four-lane road and he was coming at me at 50 miles an hour. It’s a 35 zone and everyone leaves work at 05:00. So that’s when the bulk of the traffic’s out. I’m sure other guys stop them at 10 over, 12 over. For me personally, if they’re doing 10 over just getting home from work and that’s kind of the flow, I usually just let it be until they get to the 50 and up. Once I see a 5 on there, that’s usually when I introduce myself to whoever’s doing that speed.

 So, I noticed this silver hatchback car in the left lane coming at me at least 50 miles an hour. And as we passed each other, I noticed a gentleman wearing– He had a grayish hoodie on. He had a black bandana kind of covering his face. He didn’t seem threatening, still was kind of on the back end of Covid, so some people were still wearing masks and just doing their thing, but there was no aggression, at least from his eyes to when I noticed him. And I was actually doing my last lap through town to go to dinner with my now wife, fiancé at the time. Sounds like, it’s a good legit stop. Just one more before I go home for dinner. There’s a little bit of traffic, so I made my U-turn to try to initiate a stop. And as I navigated my way through traffic, finally caught up to the silver car. We have a big movie theater that’s right there where I like to stop cars because that road in particular has no shoulder. It’s roadway and sidewalk.

 At least for me, in the heart of traffic, I’m not going to park my car in the right lane when there’s a ton of cars and having people merge and all that stuff. So just kind of waited, had my opportunity, saw the exit to the movie theater coming. Perfect, we’ll handle it in the parking lot, not a big deal. I went to grab my radio as I was activating my lights to call it the stop for our radios. I’m sure every agency is a little different, but it makes this annoying bonk type sound when you’re either covered or somebody else is trying to talk. And we had a massive fire with other part of the state patrol that the radio was getting hogged up because they were trying to deal with traffic control as the fire was approaching the highway, so sometimes you just can’t get on the radio. I’m not going to follow this guy forever trying to get some radio time. So, I’m just going to handle business. And then usually by the time I make my initial contact, radio is cleared up. I advise– this is the registration and all that stuff, not a big deal, so I hang up the radio, the lights come on. The last thing I really remember is brake lights coming from this vehicle. So just from my memory, I see brake lights. My thought was, “Great, we’re going in the parking lot,” and then the next thing I know is I’m looking over my left shoulder to this silver car facing me and the gentleman standing out with a gun pointed at me.

Yeardley:  So, Dean, why is this person facing you? Why aren’t you both facing forward and you’ve pulled up behind them?

Trooper Dean:  So that was plan A. All cops, we like to be in control. And that’s how I feel like I’m in control of the situation.

Yeardley:  When you pull up behind someone and you’re at their rear bumper.

Trooper Dean:  Yeah, it just feels right-

Yeardley:  Yeah.

Trooper Dean:  -when that doesn’t happen, it gets your Spidey senses going.

Dave:  Traffic stops happen a certain way and they happen a certain way a million times. And any deviation from that, police officers go, “Huh, what’s that?” Like if I hit my lights and you never tap your brakes, I go, “Hmm”

Trooper Dean:  Yep, something’s wrong. And after this incident, I viewed the dashcam footage. In the dashcam video itself, it shows the vehicle just make a simple U-turn. I don’t remember any of it, but my assumption is for my thought is he was going to flee. He was executing a U-turn to flee for whatever reason. I didn’t know at this time. I had no background information. So, I committed with him. And we kind of came not quite door to door, but we ended up in the center of the roadway on the double yellow line. We weren’t in any particular lane, so I’m assuming I saw him fleeing.

 And in Washington State at that time, we weren’t allowed to really pursue unless it was violent crimes. We couldn’t just pursue for just speed. But our training is still, even if someone’s fleeing, you try to give last known location, the car itself, the registration, how many occupants for other law enforcement, so, if they can contact them, they kind of know what they’re walking into. So that was the route. Mentally, I was going to go, I’m assuming. I don’t remember making those thoughts. I’ve been told by doctors that if you’re multitasking during a critical incident like this, you’ll forget everything around the critical incident itself. So, what I’m assuming was happening is I went to go grab my radio to advise them that the vehicle is going to flee. So, I was probably manipulating my radio while all this happened and that’s why I don’t remember the U-turn. Everything was multitasking down to one point where I’m staring down the barrel of a gun.

Yeardley:  So you don’t remember this person in the silver car making the U-turn, but you do remember suddenly staring down the barrel of a gun?

Trooper Dean:  Yes.

Yeardley:  And how close are you to this person?

Trooper Dean:  If I had to guess, no more than 15ft. We’re very close.

Dave:  So we’re talking like utmost one-half parking spaces away.

Trooper Dean:  If that yeah, a lot closer than for comfort, obviously.

Dan:  Are you still seated when you look over and you see you’re at gunpoint or are you getting out of the car?

Trooper Dean:  My car is in drive, my seatbelt was on just like I’m driving. I didn’t react in any way. I’m kind of thankful the way I did react. So essentially, it was a oh, shit moment. My left hand went up and he shot maybe five, six rounds. And I ducked is all I did. And I’m glad it was just a kind of a panic reaction. It probably saved my life. If I would have tried to address it. I mean, I probably wouldn’t even gotten out of my driver’s seat realistically, by the time I could even exit the kill zone or the X, as some people call it, there was between five and six rounds fired in that time trying to just get off the X. So, if I would have tried to address the threat, it definitely would have cost me my life. Even with body armor or whatever else, it wouldn’t have worked out in my favor.

Dave:  How did you get off the X?

Trooper Dean:  Thankfully, my car was still in drive and I was right foot down. I just drove away. I cleared the scene. I tried to get back onto the radio at that point, trying to be a good cop, saying all that radio stuff, “Shots fired, shots fired.” Try to give out the location of where it happened. And I didn’t know at this time, but the dispatch center, they didn’t hear a single peep. They know my mic was activating because they can log that, I guess, and when you click down your mic, but nothing came through the whole time.

Yeardley:  So, Dean, despite you being on the radio or activating your mic, they couldn’t hear you. What do you make of that?

Trooper Dean:  We’ll never know that for sure, but I couldn’t hear if there was other radio traffic. And we share our radio waves with this other agency. So, if they’re talking, we can’t talk. We cover each other up.

Yeardley:  So maybe somebody at another agency was talking over you. And you being in such a heightened state, weren’t really clocking the fact that you didn’t have a clear space to get your message out.

Trooper Dean:  Exactly. I know mentally I was in that– Being a good cop, letting people know what was happening, where was it happening. I remember saying, “silver car.” And I didn’t know I was hit at this point at all. The first round came in, it toned out my ears, especially at that close of a range. I couldn’t hear anything. The adrenaline, which is awesome, that I’ve learned, spiked really hard. And, yeah, I had zero idea at this point that I was injured at any capacity.

 So, as I cleared the scene a little bit, we have a fire station right there, maybe a half mile from where this happened. And I know they keep their back gate open for the command rigs. And I know those guys very well. My dad’s a retired firefighter. I grew up with all these guys and they know me since I was in diapers and playing Little League. So, I knew I could camp out there. And I’ve never been involved in an incident like this, so what do we do? I didn’t know what to do, so my plan was just to go camp out at the fire station, get on the radio, start making calls, because how are we going to approach this now, policy wise or anything? I just wanted to be sure we do this right if we are going to go try to recontact him.

 But as I was making the right hand turn to get to that fire department, for some reason, I looked down and we wear French blue, like navy blue uniforms. They’re really pretty, but they don’t look good when there’s a lot of blood on them. And I looked down my chest and down my legs and it’s just red. So, I knew at some capacity I was injured, at that point I don’t know what, I figured it was glass shrapnel, because faces bleed a lot, so I figure, I got a nick on my forehead or something that was causing me to bleed quite a bit or a nick on the hand. So, I got back on the radio and I remember thinking saying, “Officer down. Officer down.” As I was talking, I could feel and kind of hear my ears were kind of coming back, but it sounded like I was very muffled, like I couldn’t talk, like my mouth was full of blood, which it was. And then that’s where I started to panic a little bit. So, I remember getting on the radio saying, “I need help. Really, I need help now.” And then I remember saying, “I’m enroute to the hospital.”

[Break]

 So, my plan was just to get to the hospital.

Dan:  And you drove yourself to the hospital.

Trooper Dean:  Mm-hmm.

Dan:  Wait. It’s impressive. Adrenaline is an amazing drug.

Trooper Dean:  It’s awesome, yeah. People ask, “What made you go to the hospital?” I mean, I don’t know. I just did it. I bet you some of it was panic induced.

Dave:  You’re on autopilot and you’re like, I got to get to help and help is down there.

Trooper Dean:  Yeah. So, I get to one of our massive intersections there and this was kind of a proud trooper moment when I reviewed the dashcam, because I remember just blowing that intersection. I wasn’t going anything too fast. I was probably doing 45, 50, but with everything going on, I felt like I was doing 100 down that road, and I couldn’t remember for the life of me if the light was red or if it was green. I just smoked this intersection and caused something. So, weeks after, I talked to my boss and I was like, “Hey, do we know about this intersection?” They said, “Well, it was red, but you did what, you know, per policy you clear it, you alternate your sirens, you kind of creep through and the dashcam showed there’s always one more car that has to go in front of you.”

 There was that one more car had to go in front of me to continue on and let them clear and I continued to the hospital. So that was kind of my attaboy moment, where it’s like, “Hey, the training that we go through, it sticks. Even if you’re not thinking about it, you just do it.” So, I clear that intersection, a block or so later is the hospital. I pull in. My initial plan was to drive up into the ambulance bay.

 There’s a story that my dad talked about, bless his heart. He said that I didn’t pull into the ambulance bay because I felt like there was better things going on. But for me, if I could have, I would have put my patrol car through the front windows of that ER room. [laughs] But, there’s like a handicapped loading zone that’s there with two cones that was kind of wedged up there. And I got out of the car. I remember not fully unholstering my firearm, but I unlocked it. And I remember I might have stood there for a minute. It might have been five seconds. I don’t know. It felt like an eternity. But I was looking down the driveway I came waiting for the gunman. Maybe he was aggravated or whatever, but I was expecting him to come up that driveway. And if he did, we were going to figure it out in the parking lot.

Yeardley:  So you’re saying you were afraid you might have to engage the shooter again in the hospital parking lot?

Trooper Dean:  Yes. I’m not going to go into the hospital and put all these other people in danger. If he’s that upset with me for whatever reason, I wasn’t going to do that to innocent people. So, we’ll figure it out in the parking lot if it came down to that. But I didn’t see him come up the driveway, so I just ran up to the ER doors. The ambulance part is secured with a keypad and you have to know a code. I have it on a sticky note in my patrol car because I can never remember it.

Dave:  Same here, same here.

Trooper Dean:  Of course, that night, I look at the keypad. No, I don’t remember it. So, I just started making myself as big as possible, pounding on the glass, hoping someone would walk by. And I’ve heard It was like 50 something seconds that I was standing out there, just bleeding all over the place. And the person that let me in initially was actually a secretary that worked in the hospital there and she was going to get copy paper or something from a supply room. And she’s the one who noticed me and opened the doors. And I remember her eyes getting huge. And I was like, “Oh, that’s not good.”

 So, I walk in. I never got out onto the radio at all. So, the hospital has no idea what’s going on, so I come running in there and a nurse confronted me as well as a medical assistant. And she comes up to me. I think the first word she says, “Where’s the other guy?” So, I’m assuming she thought maybe it was someone else’s blood all over me. And for some reason I remembered her name in that moment. And I said, “Jamie, it’s me.” And she kind of looks at my name tag and she says, “Okay. She’s like, do people know?” And I shrugged my shoulders, and I’m assuming she meant like, does dispatch or are people aware of what’s going on? I shrug my shoulders. And she is like, okay, well, we’ll get ahold of somebody and I go to reach into my back pocket, because I always slip my phone in my back right pocket when I go to the hospital in case, I got to make a call if we’re doing search warrants or something. And I left my phone in my car. So, I go to reach for it and it’s not there. And you know, dang it, okay.

 So, Nurse Jamie told me that when I walked in, I was very guarded. I was in a guarded position, very tense, kind of like protecting myself almost. And once they sat me down, I thought initially it was a wheelchair, no it was an office chair. So, they sat me down in a nice rolly office chair. That moment of relief that help is here and I’m safe. I finally noticed my initial injury. That’s my left hand. As I bring it down, I could see like, it’s like kind of a crescent moon injury of some sort, like just a hole out of my middle finger. That’s the only injury that I notice at the time.

 The doctor, Dr. Potter and Nurse Jamie, she said, I’m the nurse in charge of this trauma. And they’re kind of doing introductions and stuff. They’re working on me. And at some point, I think the hospital reached out to dispatch and said, “Hey, your trooper is here.” And so, a few minutes later, dispatch finally tells the guys, “Hey, the trooper is at the hospital. Unknown condition.” My coworker, Jarrett, he comes walking in the ER room where they’re doctoring me up. And he looked like that typical angel coming out of the heavens. The light from the hallway was, like, over glowing him. And I remember trying to reach up to, like, fist bump him, shake his hand, or just let him know I’m good. And the doctor politely set my head back down on the bed so he could do his job.

 As they were doctoring me up, I remember they took my body armor off. And I remember the doctor was messing with my duty belt. I don’t know if I actually swatted his hand, but I remember putting my hand like this is my part, you work up here. I’ll take care of my duty belt.

Yeardley:  You were pointing to your head to the doctor, like, you work on this part of me.

Trooper Dean:  Yeah, fix me. I’ll take care of my gear. They ended up cutting it anyway, which is, “Oh, well,”

[laughter]

 I was hoping to get it back, like, completely together, but now they ended up shearing it off of me. I remember I was still trying to lean up to just be aware of what’s going on. I remember a forehead pushing my head way back onto the bed. And then they knocked me out with two rounds of sleepy juice, whatever they use for meds to knock you out. Nurse Jamie said, “Yeah, we had to do two rounds because your adrenaline was like– You weren’t going to sleep yet.” So, they had to round me up again and then that’s what did the trick.

Dan:  So, Dean, when you initially go into the hospital and that initial assessment that the doctor and nurse Jamie do on you, what specific injuries do you have?

Trooper Dean:  I had a gunshot wound to my fingers, which is the one I noticed. I took a round or at least shrapnel part of a round into my palm on my left hand. One round punch into my cheek, and it split the difference between my hard and soft palate. It punched in on the left, so it rolled through and then lodged. In the right side, didn’t lodge into the jaw, just kind of that’s where it came to rest. I had around that punch through like a perfect hole punch right through my left ear. The scars look kind of cool. You can actually see the bullet start burning my skin. There’s a burn marker, a scar up at the front, but a perfect hole punch right through my ear and then had one round that glanced off the back of my head. Yeah, so that was what I was presenting to them. I did have a small brain bleed behind my left ear, and I think that was the biggest thing they were worried about, but that was kind of the biggest concern they had at that time. And I think that’s what projected them believing I was going to be in the hospital for months and months or even lose my life. It might have been that injury specifically that made them nervous, I guess.

Paul:  So, Dean, you stated upfront that you assumed a defensive posture with your left hand, and that’s why you have the crescent shaped bullet graze, if you will.

Trooper Dean:  Yes.

Paul:  But you also have at least two gunshot entries that are pretty tightly clustered on the left side of your head. The description of the entry wound to your left ear, you indicated that you had a crescent-shaped margin on one side.

Trooper Dean:  Yeah.

Paul:  That sounds like a bullet abrasion. And that provides trajectory information because pathologists can use that type of wound assessment to help with trajectory analysis. So that bullet is going from your back towards your front, and probably just slightly, but in some ways, your movement forward by stepping on the gas that right there, if that bullet had gone straight in or from front to back, you probably would have been in much worse shape. Your instincts, I think, were stellar.

Trooper Dean:  No, that’s a great way to put it. I haven’t heard it like that, but, yeah, that’s– It does make sense and then the one that did glance off the back of my head, it was very similar. I had staples and stitches, so I’m assuming it entered at some point, But I think just the angle, like you were saying, Paul, it didn’t penetrate my skull. It just kind of rode it and exited. But I actually didn’t know about any injuries other than my hand until I woke up three, four days later.

Yeardley:  God. So, you’re unconscious in the hospital, and obviously your department must have let your family know what was happening.

Trooper Dean:  Yeah, so now at this point, I’m out. My family was notified at that time. The Trooper Jarrett, that came into me called my dad and said, “Hey, Dean’s been in an accident,” being blunt like he is, “He just says, dean’s been shot and he’s at the hospital.” And so, my dad reached out to my fiancé, Megan. She was on a walk with our dog. My dad being an EMT for so many years and a firefighter, he knows how to talk to people a little better, being less blunt about it. And he says, “Hey, Dean’s been in an accident, not a big deal, we were just going to go down the hospital and see him.” Obviously, as spouses are, her mind went to the worst and she knew right away that it was more than just a simple accident.

 So they get to the hospital. My dad, first thing he does, he walks in and looks at the vital screen. Everything, I’m assuming, looks okay. And so, he goes out there to my mom and her and like, “Hey, his vitals are good, he’s fine. No issues there.” So, you know, some optimism from my dad, but I was very critical at that point. It wasn’t looking great. The medical personnel did not think I was going to make it overnight.

[Break 2]

Yeardley:  Dean, since you aren’t able to get through on the radio after you’ve been shot, you can’t call for backup. Nobody knows what’s happened to you. What happens to the shooter? Does that guy just get away?

Trooper Dean:  So when all this is going on, thankfully, there was some really awesome witnesses. One followed me to the hospital and the other one actually followed the shooter. So, witnesses are calling dispatches advising all their guys on what’s going on. When the police officers get to the scene, there’s nothing there. There’s a few shell casings and some broken glass that’s it.

Yeardley:  Is there any blood at the scene?

Trooper Dean:  No, not that I’m aware of.

Yeardley:  Because it was all in your car.

Trooper Dean:  It’s probably all in my car. I haven’t seen pictures of the inside of my car post incident, but I’m sure most of it was on my floorboard and kind of all over my center console. And so, they all get to the scene, nothing’s there. They still set up a perimeter of some sort to keep the scene safe. And it was probably a 30 to 45-minute ordeal post shooting. The shooter, his name is Brandon O’Neill.

Yeardley:  And how old was Brandon roughly?

Trooper Dean:  In his late 30s.

Dave:  Dean, you mentioned this witness that followed you to the hospital. And then there was also a witness that followed Brandon, the suspect. I just think it’s remarkable because we don’t run into witnesses like that every day.

Trooper Dean:  Yeah, after this incident, I was able to meet one of them. The other one I haven’t had a chance to meet yet. I hope I get the opportunity to meet him or her at some point. But I met the one that followed the shooter.

Yeardley:  So you met the witness that followed Brandon?

Trooper Dean:  Yes, if it wasn’t for her. I mean, she followed Brandon the entire way until the other blue guys came in and kind of took over for her.

Dan:  Would it have been obvious to Brandon that he was being followed by someone from this initial crime scene?

Trooper Dean:  Well, when I talked to her, I didn’t really ask the question, but I’m assuming she used her crime scene show tactics, [Yeardley laughs] and she kind of wasn’t right up on them. I bet she just stayed at a good, safe distance. But, yeah, it’s hard because once they get on the highway, we have traffic lights at all the major intersections. So, for her not to get bogged down in a light or other things going on, like she was able to stick with them.

Dan:  The great thing about her as a witness too is, you weren’t able to get your radio traffic out with a license plate, so she was able to provide that. And now you don’t have maybe potentially another traffic stop with only a vehicle description. You’ve got an actual plate, and police officers know exactly what they’re dealing with now. She potentially saved other lives.

Trooper Dean:  She 100% did. And it’s a big farming area. There’s a ton of orchards and there’s backroads that you can just disappear almost immediately. And, thankfully for her and her courage, she was able to prevent that from happening. It’s very awesome to see that people are willing, seeing what happened and still able to follow this guy. She’s an absolute rock star.

Yeardley:  Yeah.

Trooper Dean:  So city police department was up front initiating the small pursuit. It was very quick, and they got him turned around. I just know at some point they turned him around and got him coming northbound. And there’s a big construction zone. They’re redoing the lanes of travel there. So, it was all bottlenecked up. And by that time, I think every cop was coming and they just created a row just waiting for them. So, they’re making their way through this construction zone. They hit a slow enough point, nice little bottleneck, where there wasn’t a whole lot of room for Brandon to get away.

 And the lead patrol officer decided to do an intentional intervention. For those of you that not know, it’s considered lethal force. It’s pretty much you wreck the car. Doesn’t matter what it takes, you wreck the car, you don’t do a pit maneuver and make it all pretty like in the movies, you take this car out. So that patrol officer dumped that car, and then they initiated a felony stop. Brandon stepped out of the vehicle. No resistance whatsoever. They took him into custody and he said to one of the police officers, everything about what happened is in my car. Lo and behold, the firearm was in there. So, they got Brandon into custody. No further incident, which is awesome. I would have hated for another law enforcement officer to get into another gunfight over something like this. Thankfully, it was just kind of a simple arrest at that point.

Dave:  How many days were you in the hospital?

Trooper Dean:  I think 10. Time was blurry for pretty much my whole hospital stay. The incident happened on a Thursday, I think, I came to Sunday. They flew me to Harborview Medical Center, which is in Seattle, but I didn’t know because I was out. So, as I came to Sunday, my dad notices I wake up, and the nurse, she was working on my chart at the time. They do the usual, “Hey, what’s your name? Date of birth?” I kind of mutter it out. I had real sore throat at that point, so it was hard to talk. And then she’s like, “Oh, do you know where you’re at?” And I remember being, like, confident as ever like, “I’m in St. Mary’s Medical Center, Walla Walla, Washington.” And she’s like, “No, you’re Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Washington.”

 So anybody that knows Washington state knows Harborview is when it’s bad. Like, you’re in bad shape. I mean, it is a good thing because the medical care is world class, but because you’re there, it’s not good. So, I remember, like, “Oh, crap, that’s not good.” And I was kind of in and out. They’re giving me pain meds, so I’m falling asleep. I noticed a cast on my left arm. It was just kind of achy, sore. Throughout this whole incident, I never felt, like, true pain, just very achy, like a bad workout-type thing. And I just kind of disregarded it. The doctors came in to do their rounds that morning and my lead doctor, Dr. Dillon is her name, she said, “Hey, good news. You’ll be able to go back to work if you want. The injuries aren’t that bad.” And so that was pretty cool. And it kind of set the precedence of, like, “Okay, my goal is to return to work at some point.” Having the lead doctor give the green light was pretty awesome.

 And when you’re in the ICU, you’re not supposed to leave your room. But I was getting stronger, I was getting better. And one particular nurse, I asked her if I could use the restroom. She’s like, “Okay, how about we go take a lap? How does that sound? Go walk around a little bit.” We’d go to the hallway that connects one part of the hospital to the ICU, and there’s a mirror off to my right-hand side. And I look at it and it looked awful, like dry blood. I had gauze coming out of my nose, gauze around my ear, gauze taped around my head.

 And the nurse must have noticed my movement looking at the mirror or maybe saw my body language kind of sink a little bit. And she grabbed me and made me look at her, and she pulled down her mask and she said, “I want you to look at my nose for a second,” so, I did. And she’s like, “What do you notice?” I was like, “It looks like a nose.” And she said, “When I was four years old, a dog literally bit my nose off.” And she says, “It’s going to be a haul, but this staff will take care of you and you’ll look like nothing happened.” And that kind of comforted me a little bit.

Yeardley:  Dean, I want to just talk about your face for a second because you look incredible. Hats off to your plastic surgeons because honestly, you can’t tell at all that you were literally shot in the face multiple times.

Trooper Dean:  She was incredible. She’s the top doc for like maxillofacial surgery.

Yeardley:  This is your ear surgeon?

Trooper Dean:  Yes. She’s the top doctor of all of maxillofacial. And then her number two guy was a palate specialist, so he did the palate rebuilding. But I had the two best doctors in Washington State probably. And yeah, she did an incredible job. It was comical at first because they said, “Oh, yeah, not a big deal, too easy. We’ll get in there, patch you up, call it a day.” And I go and do one of my follow-up visits after the surgery. And then they say, “It looks great. Everything’s looking like we should.” And then I see him out in the hallway and they’re like bragging to each other about it, like high fiving and like, “Hey, that looks awesome.” And I was like, “They said it was so easy.” So, I asked them and she’s like, no, it’s actually like the hardest plastic surgery we can do because of the nerves and everything, and we didn’t want to spook you. And I was like, “Well, I do appreciate that.” The only visible thing is maybe a half-inch scar where the bullet entered. I still do have numbness underneath my scar. This is kind of like when you rub your hand on, like the inside of your forearm, that kind of weird ticklish sensation. That’s pretty much all I have. My smile’s a little more crooked now, but they said with time and the nerves coming back, it’ll get better. They kind of confirmed that my cheesy smile would come fully back, but they said that I’ll get at least half of it back, so–

Yeardley:  That’s incredible. And you did actually lose the end of your finger, didn’t you?

Trooper Dean:  Yep. So, I lost my, where like your fingernail is on my left ring finger, I lost that joint. Then I lost half of my middle finger. I had to tweak some things in work life and off life, like how to adjust the way I do things. But so far, there’s not a lot of things I can’t do.

Yeardley:  That’s amazing.

[Break 3]

 Dean, do we ever find out why this guy Brandon decided to turn around and point a gun at you and pull the trigger? Was Brandon involved with that initial eviction call?

Trooper Dean:  Yes. He was involved with all of it. So, it was his apartment. He was behind on rent, whatever, however it stemmed to start the eviction process, that’s how all this started. And deputies went to serve the eviction notice and there was a bomb threat. And then also there was a note saying, “I will execute any cop or manager that tries to evict me.”

Yeardley:  This is a note that Brandon left?

Trooper Dean:  Yes. And then Brandon was evicted at that point with that threat being made.

Yeardley:  I see. So, you are at the tail end of Brandon’s really bad day.

Trooper Dean:  Yes. And lo and behold, as the news articles came out and stuff, and I woke up and was able to access all that that’s when this whole thing was connected.

Paul:  What is Brandon charged with?

Trooper Dean:  So, his charges are attempted murder one, assault one with a firearm, felony harassment and bomb threats and felony alluding.

Yeardley:  Dean, I know because I did a little bit of research before we brought you on today that the case hasn’t gone to court. And part of that has to do with Brandon, him being deemed not competent to stand trial, is that so?

Trooper Dean:  That’s correct, yeah. So initially, they took him to one of our state hospitals and he was deemed competent, but now we’re past that point of it where the medical hospital deemed him competent to stand trial. And now, the buzzer essentially restarts, and he entered a not guilty plea. So now we’re getting ready for trial, if there is a trial. Our last pretrial was just this other day, so hopefully we can be ready to go to close this chapter finally.

Dave:  How’d the first conversation go with your wife?

Trooper Dean:  It was emotional. It just a great moment just hugging it out. And we didn’t really talk about the incident a whole lot that I remember. We just tried to treat it like normal and maybe a week or so before my shooting, we did our engagement photos for like our wedding invitations. And so, she brought out her laptop and the photographer had sent her all the photos, so we spent the day going through our favorite photos and stuff like that. So, we didn’t really dive into what happened. But from what I do remember, it was just kind of a normal conversation just being together.

Yeardley:  I always say this job that y’all do is just not normal. And the idea that you would suffer the kind of injuries that you did on the job and that you would then decide, “Oh, as soon as I’m well enough, I’m going to get back in my patrol car and I’m going to go back to the job where I almost lost my life.”

Trooper Dean:  Yeah, when that time did come, definitely nerve wracking getting back into work. But I mean, it’s been pretty mellow since I returned to work. I know that can change obviously in an instant. And I know my wife and my mom, I know initially they did not want me to return to work, which is absolutely fair, but I love the job. I still love the job even to this day. Being a Washington State patrol guy, it’s awesome. I think it’s one of the best jobs in the world. And I think that was part of the drive. It didn’t take anything away from me.

 Obviously, there were some tough days mentally as the day came closer, like we started like planning my kind of reintroduction, small FTO phase just to make sure, I remembered how to do all this stuff. And the moment came and a lot of nerves coming through. I think the first shift, when I did go back, I wanted to make my first traffic stop like a winner, a big speed or something cool. And so, we probably just drove for like four hours. I’m just feeling it out. I had a great FTO with me and I rode with him for a week or so. We’re just doing basic traffic stuff. We’re not helping PD with anything.

 And then finally we had the first big speed that pops up on the radar. I think it was in the high 80s in a 60s zone. I was like, “Boom, there’s my first one.” And that first stop felt like an eternity, getting back to it. That walk between my patrol car and their car, there’s no cover, there’s no nothing. That walk between our cars felt like an hour. And once I got behind their car, which is now considered cover, it kind of felt easy. Thankfully, they were very nice people, I think they were coming into town for wine tasting or something like that. Very nice people. And it was just a great stop. And then that was kind of my reintegration back. Once I did that first one, confidence came back, and then I was just kind of tweaking out all those stuff. I missed out for over a year because I didn’t return to work until January of 2024 and this happened in September 2022.

Dave:  I think it says a lot about your community that one person followed you and one person followed the suspect. I think that is not heard of.

Trooper Dean:  Yeah, it was one of those– It’s a crappy situation, but it was awesome to see the community come together. There was numerous events for me and my family that just got people together. They did like a huge spaghetti feed type thing at a church, and it just got people together. I wasn’t strong enough at that point to go and attend it. That was like a day or two after I got back from the hospital. But it was consistently throughout all this time. And then even now, I’ll stop a local cat and they’ll give me the double take, and they’re like, “It’s you, huh?” And I was like, “Yeah.” Get a handshake or, “Hey, it’s awesome you’re back in uniform, back at work,” nothing but kind words. And, yeah, it happens on a weekly basis, I run into somebody. It’s a great little town. I’m very thankful that the community is what it is and it just made everything a lot easier.

Dan:  I also want to note, I don’t pick up any hatred, any anger towards Brandon, I love that about you.

Trooper Dean:  Yeah, there’s no ill will. I mean, I have questions, that’s all I got. There’s no hate behind the questions I want to ask. It’s just I want to know why and how come and because even if, let’s say, he did just pull over, I’m in the Army National Guard here, and during the Covid times, we assisted at the food bank, and I was actually given a ton of resources to help people that are in financial distress. And if he would have pulled over, and even if it was like a heated conversation because he’s mad of whatever’s going on in life, I always keep resources in my car, I probably would not have given him a ticket.

 My dad asked me in the hospital, “Do you want to meet the guy who shot you?” I nodded my head yes. And he’s like, “Do you want to hurt him or do you hate him or something like that?” And I shook my head no. I’m sure he has very valid reasons, and whatever those reasons are, maybe we’ll know one day, maybe not. But obviously he was having a very terrible day before he met me. I will never have hatred towards Brandon. It wasn’t anything particular. Just as some people say, right place, wrong time. For me, probably wrong place, wrong time.

Yeardley:  Yeah.

Trooper Dean:  We have a saying in our academy, which now it rings very, very true. And it’s, “I will not quit, I will not die, I will survive.”

Yeardley:  Let me just repeat that a little more slowly because I want it to really sink in. The mantra is, “I will not quit, I will not die, I will survive.”

Trooper Dean:  Correct. And you say that before you do anything and everything in the academy. And you’re saying it 20, 30, 40 times a day. And it drove me bonkers back then. But that’s how our academy trains us. Like, you don’t quit, you don’t lay down. I’d hate to say it, but all law enforcements, like this is we won’t know when we lose a gunfight. It’s just the lights get shut off. And that is what it is. It’s just ingrained to us through training. It’s just who we are as people. We’re just fighters and survivors. Thankfully, I was in a predicament where everything kind of lined up where I could get myself to help.

Yeardley:  Yeah, thank God for that. It’s an incredible story of what a person can do when you refuse to quit or die. Thank you so much for sharing that with us today. It is such a great story of the human spirit prevailing.

Trooper Dean:  Thank you.

Dan:  It’s every cop’s nightmare, and I just applaud you, Dean, for staying in the fight.

Dave:  My takeaway here is you’ve got an amazing perspective and I appreciate it.

Paul:  This was an amazing story and I’m glad everything has turned out so well for you.

Yeardley:  Yeah. Stay safe out there.

[music]

Trooper Dean:  Always. Thank you so much.

Yeardley:  Now for a sneak peek at today’s new bonus episode.

Dave:  If you don’t know first responders, what Dan mentioned, those are great ways to make little impacts. Go down to the police station. Even giving little cards, we used to get little thank you cards from elementary schoolers. We’d put them up all over our police department. That’s the stuff that really matters to cops.

Yeardley:  To listen today’s bonus episode and access hundreds more, go to smalltowndicks.com/superfam and hit that little join button.

 Small Town Dicks was created by Detectives Dan and Dave. The podcast is produced by Jessica Halstead and me, Yeardley Smith. Our senior editor is Soren Begin and our editors are Christina Bracamontes and Erin Phelps. Our associate producers are the Real Nick Smitty and Erin Gaynor. Gary Scott is our executive producer, and Logan Heftel is our production manager. Our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.And our social media maven is Monika Scott. It would make our day if you became a member of our Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at @smalltowndicks, we love hearing from you.

[music]

 Oh, our groovy theme song was composed by John Forrest. Also, if you’d like to support the making of this podcast, go to smalltowndicks.com/superfam and hit that little joint button. There, for a small subscription fee, you’ll find exclusive content you can’t get anywhere else.

 The transcripts of this podcast are thanks to SpeechDocs and they can be found on our website, smalltowndicks.com. Thank you SpeechDocs for this wonderful service. Small Town Dicks is an Audio 99 Production. Small Town Fam, thanks for listening.

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