CLARKSVILLE, Ark. — A Johnson County Deputy was shot just two days ago while responding to a call in Knoxville, Arkansas.
“There is no doubt about the power of prayers. There is no doubt that it was God himself that steered that round to the path of least resistance,” said Lt. Brent Scott.
Scott was off duty Saturday, July 30, when a stolen property investigation at a home on Ivy Lane in Knoxville escalated to a shooting. Police say the suspect, Christina Beasley, refused to come out of the camper trailer and raised a handgun through the window narrowly missing a deputy.
That’s when Scott and other supervisors from the sheriff’s office responded to the scene. He was standing about 40 yards from the trailer behind a small tree when he was hit by a bullet.
“While I was standing there probably 15 minutes after my arrival, there was a single blast, a gunshot and I’d felt that I had been struck immediately. It felt like it hit me right here in the right hip area and kind of spun me clockwise somewhat,” he said.
An Arkansas State Trooper used a shield to help him get to safety where he was then taken by ambulance to the hospital. The round went into the left side of his groin and traveled at a downward right angle into his upper right femur.
Scott says doctors decided to leave the bullet inside him because removing could cause more damage. On Monday, Aug. 1, investigators found a spent round in his bulletproof vest.
He says being shot was scary, but a lot of adrenaline kicked in along with his training.
“That kind of comes on later in the days that follow when you think it was inches, it was centimeters, it was millimeters that determined life or death in this situation, and then you kind of start to think a little bit more about what could have been,” he said.
Scott says he is fortunate, and his doctors can’t explain how the round that made its way from his groin to his femur didn’t hit anything vital.
Though he won’t be back to normal duty for two weeks, as a supervisor he didn’t want to miss a day of coming into the office.
“I want them to see that I was able to get up and walk myself out of there after being shot that day and get on an ambulance. I was in the hospital for minimal time, then walked back into this office yesterday and today just so they could see, 'hey, just because you are shot doesn’t mean it’s over.'”
Beasley has been charged with attempted capital murder and is being held at the Franklin County Jail on a $1 million cash-only bond.
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