It concerns the only Seguin Police Officer to die from a line of duty incident.
Link here: http://seguingazette.com/story.lasso?ew ... 1bb27a68e7" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Unfortunately, the web edition does not have the photos that the dead-tree version has of Joe L. Carrillo. I had seen his picture around town, but did not know the story behind it until today. There is a picture of him and some other details on the Seguin PD website: http://www.ci.seguin.tx.us/police/memorial.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Since the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise links tend to go dead after a short while, some highlights from both links:
At 2100 on 26 September 1965, 22 year-old Joe Carrillo had been a Seguin Police Department Patrolman for less than a month. He was helping other officers synchronize a traffic signal (how many of you cops reading this have ever done that these days?) on Court Street, which is the main east-west street through Seguin and is also know as Alternate US 90. A car drove by with a defective headlight. Carrillo pursued the vehicle and it stopped near Goodrich and Court Street, on the west side of town.
Although Carillo didn't know it yet, the driver was an AWOL Army private from Fort Polk, LA., named Dennis William Cox who apparently had a narcotics habit and left behind a number of stolen and abandoned vehicles between Fort Polk and Seguin. He was currently driving a Chevy that he stole in Houston. When Carillo asked for a driver's license, Cox instead pulled a 9mm "Belgian Luger" and shot Carrillo in the chest.
The bullet narrowly missed his heart (one doctor attributing the miss to the heart beat being in contraction at the time of the shot) and exited his back. It must have taken a less than direct route inside the officer's chest, because Carrillo ended up losing the entire left lung, part of the other lung, and part of a kidney.
However, Carrillo did not know this at the time. He just knew he was shot and still standing. He is quoted as saying,
“I knew I’d been hit bad,” the young officer told reporter Sam Kindrick. “But I remembered that all the people who were killed in movies and books fell when shot. I was still on my feet, so I reasoned that I wasn’t dying.”
Carrillo drew his revolver and fired back, hitting Cox in the elbow, who then drove off down Court Street. Carrillo got in his car, radioed, "“I’m hit! I’m going after him! Send help!” and chased after Cox.
Carrillo drove with his right hand and fired five more shots with his left hand, hitting Cox twice, once in the hand and once in the back of the head, killing Cox. (Not bad shooting!) Cox's car rolled across the center line and struck another car that had pulled over, injuring two teen age girls.
The insurance that the city carried on its police officers then did not cover the hospital care (!) so donations were collected to help with the bill. Carillo eventually recovered enough to return to the police department, where he was moved from patrol to detectives, and he served until age 32 when he contracted pneumonia. With only part of one lung left, he was not able to fight off the pneumonia, and died on 20 July 1975.
