The Running Shoot-out
Article by Darryl J. Kimball Photos by Rocky Laws
On October 5, 2005, I was paired up
with Parry Jameson in one of our patrol helicopters. It was a Wednesday afternoon, around 3:00. It was time for us to wind down and hand the baton to the night shift. On our way back, Parry and I noticed
that we were a little low on fuel. We were almost over our base at Gillespie Field in El Cajon, getting ready to land, when we got a radio call. “ASTREA, we have a pursuit in our
city. Can you switch over?” It was the San Diego Police Department. “We’re on southern frequency,” said
their dispatcher, who gave me a location in San Diego that I didn’t immediately recognize.
34 June 2013 “10-4,” I said into the radio. “Switching
over.” I hit the zone button on the radio to bring up San Diego PD, and then tog- gled over until I got to their Southern Di- vision frequency. The first thing Parry and I heard was a
police officer yelling into his radio, “He’s shooting at me again! He just shot at me again!” Parry and I looked at each other. “Holy
crap, dude, get this thing moving!” I said. We pulled a transition over ASTREA
base and came straight down the runway in front of our building. We could see our night crew prepping their helicopter out on the ramp. Parry and I were doing about 115 knots.
The pursuit had turned into a running shootout with a suspect who was driving a black Honda Civic. He was wanted for
a felony warrant for a recent robbery that had occurred in the area. I switched back to the San Diego PD
radio frequency. Parry and I heard the same officer, still in trouble, “He shot at me again!” The officer put out his loca- tion as he blew through several intersec- tions. Then he said, “I lost the vehicle. I lost the vehicle!” He transmitted the last location where he’d seen the suspect ve- hicle, along with the direction it was head- ing in. Up in the cockpit Parry and I were thinking, oh my god, please don’t lose the vehicle! We certainly weren’t faulting the officer; he was just doing his job. We were hoping that since we were low
on fuel, en route to the call, and trying to help, that the pursuit didn’t end before we got there. The radio was silent for about
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