>>> hours after their photographs were shown to the world, the suspects murdered a police officer and were headed out with a hijacked car and drove into the adjacent town of watertown . there were only four patrol officers and a supervisor on duty after midnight in watertown then, but that was enough to stop the bombing suspects in their tracks, that small band of police brothers was not going to let those suspects get out of watertown alive. the small town cops who had never fired their guns in the line of duty risked their lives in the face of bullets and bombs, the kind of assault no other american police officers have ever had to face. and they're all alive to tell their stories tonight, and that is one of the miracles of that amazing night. they told their story for the first time today beginning with officer joe reynolds who was alone in his car when he began following a mercedes that had been reported hijacked earlier that evening.
>> i was following the vehicle, you know, he was going pretty slow, so i was kind of keeping my distance, didn't know if he was going to take out, jump out of the car, start running. so at that point he stopped his vehicle and i was probably, you know, 10, 15 yards away. tamerlan jumped out, started walking towards my cruiser , started firing at me.
>> now, this is the strangest moment possibly in the whole story. you are pursuing a car wanted in a carjack, and the person you're pursuing stops, gets out of a car and walks toward a police car .
>> right.
>> firing a gun.
>> yeah. it's crazy.
>> what are you thinking at that moment?
>> i mean, my first reaction was just to create some distance. he was kind of walking up on me, i had no defense besides the cruiser . i ducked below the dashboard, put the cruiser in reverse, backed up maybe 30 yards, while i backed up, radioed to dispatch shots fired, shots fired. at that time i jumped out, put it in park, used the driver's door for cover.
>> how many shots before you got into reverse.
>> nonstop, i couldn't count them. i could hear him ding them off my cruiser .
>> you're the first to arrive on the scene that's already an open firefight. what do you see when you arrive?
>> as i come around the corner, i see officer reynolds , his vehicle is now in reverse, so i missed the first five, ten seconds of him getting out of the vehicle, starting to fire. i could hear gunshots going off. i heard officer reynolds say shots fired. i put my car in park. as i put my car in park, a round came through the windshield. at the time, you know, i wasn't sure how close it was or what -- how far, how many suspects we had, i didn't know anything yet, but i know someone is getting close with some rounds. so at that time i take cover behind the engine, which is down low, put it in park, and i'm attempting to get my ar-15 out of the locked container that it's in in our cruiser . i tried two or three times. i couldn't get it out, i thought it was just a matter of time before he's going to zero in and get me, so i made a decision to get rid of the cruiser . stepped on the brake. put it in drive, jumped out, let the cruiser go down range towards the bad guys .
>> and you're both out there just with your handguns.
>> correct.
>> how much ammunition do you have between you at that point?
>> i had 40 bullets.
>> and i had 27 i believe.
>> when does this shift from you've got incoming bullets to suddenly there's bombs?
>> almost like 30 seconds.
>> yeah, 30 seconds into it, standing next to each other, i think we both saw something flying through the air, at least i think i said something to you, sergeant, we got to move, said something, and there was a big explosion. we kept running back and forth into the backyard, trying to get better cover.
>> who do you think is the next person that gets there on scene?
>> officer cologne. i make it on deck, i can hear the shots. i see officer reynolds behind. right now what i saw when i came in, he was behind his cruiser , 465 was a little back, then saw sergeant mcclellan behind his cruiser , and they were both exchanging gunfire. i just fear that he did not have the right cover at that time. so i placed my cruiser between his cruiser and officer reynolds ' cruiser . i don't know what i did, i just -- my first thing again is take fire away from him, so i opened the door, put the spotlight towards them, and received fire right away, then i saw getting around behind the car, let off a few rounds, then i see something thrown at us and i could only see the fuse, almost something lit up, going off in the middle of the road .
>> who got there next at this point?
>> i would say i probably arrived next.
>> what did you hear? were you on duty, off duty?
>> i started heading their way. got about a quarter mile from the police station here, that's when i heard the shots, shots fired. i think i made it the mile and a half in about 30 seconds down to where they were. and as i'm pulling up, i could hear the gunfire. [ gunfire ] kind of assessed things. let me see if i can get around and flank them. so i decide to cut down the front of the house that we were by, down the side yard, over a couple of fences into different backyards and came up on the suspect's left side. i decided to try taking a couple of skip shots, you shoot at the ground, try to ricochet the round out, try to take them out at the ankles. tried a couple rounds like that. that's when ultimately turns out it was tamerlan realized i was there, left his position of cover, came running up the sidewalk firing at me, caught up between a car and chain-link fence, that fence separated the yard i was in, and he ran up about five feet up that driveway, confronted me, and started firing at me. he was about six or eight feet from me, firing his pistol at me. i was firing at him. i had run out of ammunition, had to do a reload in the middle of that. he had a problem with his firearm. i don't know if he jammed or what, kind of looked at his gun, then threw it at me, hit me in the left bicep here, turned, ran back down the driveway to the street, took a left running towards the other officers on scene and i holstered up, chased after him, tackled him. you know, he didn't, you know, get thrown back, it is not like the movies where you shoot somebody and they're thrown 10, 15 feet back, that's not reality. people can take the bullets and keep on fighting.
>> tim, when did you come into this?
>> i was by the cruiser , i knew if he was going to get away, he would kill more innocent people. i engaged him in gunfire. once i couldn't shoot him based on distance, i turned around, heard somebody hit, he went down to the ground, said i'm hit in the groin. right away, are you going to be okay. even if he's not going to be, you're telling him he is going to be okay, his leg opened like a faucet, blood everywhere, i was kneeling next to him, pull a tourniquet out of my pocket. me and another officer try to put it on, the shot was too high on the groin for that tourniquet, then almost a cpr move, put my hand into the wound, blood was ballooning around us. he quickly lost consciousness, went pale white, and harvard university police officer and boston police arrived with a medical bag, give an option, chest compressions , had to rip-off his vest, calling for rescue, my brother, a firefighter gets out of driver passenger side, comes up with jimmy caruso.
>> your brother showed up with the ambulance.
>> we locked eyes, he was like thank god you're not on the ground, thought maybe i might have been.
>> he heard the radio traffic there was an officer down, was worried it could be his brother, tim.
>> first reports was that a watertown police officer was down, didn't know if i was off duty. we saw each other, just that moment of recognition in the eyes, and officer done hue in the air, tossed in the ambulance with my brother and jimmy, and then a paramedic got in the back, they started to work on him. a transit officer , who is going to help drive to the hospital.
>> the team that drove this ambulance there is now in the back trying to save the life, so the regular driver is back there trying to save officer donahue's life.
>> they worked to save him, i hopped in the driver's seat, tear off out of there, try to get to the hospital as fast as possible.
>> you had never driven one of these before?
>> now, that's what i take out of all of this, you know, this i call for help , we're in a small town , four cruisers on the street, one supervisor, i call for help during a firefight, and by the end of the firefight we have officers from different communities in our community helping us, so he comes to save our lives and they end up saving his life, which is a perfect circle as far as i'm concerned. that's the super bowl of police work, saving another police officer 's life. it wasn't like they pulled him out of the way or pulled him out of a burning building or out of a car, this officer was dead and they kept him alive with oxygen and pumping his chest and to me, you know, his wife has a husband and child has a father because of these two right here.
>> let's go to the strangest thing in this story, joe, which is this moment that you lived through alone which is you're in pursuit, he stops, they stopped and get out of the car. i have never heard of this in police pursuit of anyone, this stop and getting out of the car, walking toward a police officer in a car and shooting.
>> you know, he hadn't activated his lights or anything, didn't let them know technically that he was interested in stopping them or anything else. you know, they just stopped dead in the middle of the road , started attacking him. you know, so like i said, it wasn't a pursuit. i think those words are misleading.
>> you also have to remember, they had everything that they have done before this, they have won. they placed bombs, got away with it. they assassinated a cop, they got away with it. they carjacked this guy, they got away with it. they're starting to think we can do whatever we want. we're going to do whatever we want, going to take it, next cop we see, we're going to take it to him. luckily, it was us and we acted the right way, came together as a team and thank god they're where they should be and we're where we should be.
>> after all of that the only thing that made those guys uncomfortable in our conversation today was when i called them heroes. we will have more of what they had to say in just a
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