Not funny because Purcell had been shot twice by a man on Maple near Meridian on July 11, 2008. It was my birthday, and I thought, 'That's not even that funny.' "
"At first I thought it was kind of a joke. When he checked his cellphone, however, it was jammed with messages: a deputy had been shot.
He is a police officer, and sirens are the soundtrack of his profession. He didn't think anything of them at first. The sound of the sirens shook Derek Purcell awake at his house in southeast Wichita, not far from McConnell Air Force Base. Soon, her parents and Brian's parents joined her there. Sarah was taken to a small waiting room next to where Brian was undergoing surgery. Law enforcement officials were encouraged enough to tell reporters gathered on South Rock Road near the shooting scene that they were optimistic about Brian's chances of recovery. "That's a good sign, right?" Sarah asked. The man who shot him had called in a false report and waited to ambush the officer who responded, authorities said later.īut Brian was alert and had given officers information about the man who shot him.Īnd he was talking before he went into surgery, Maxfield told her. "You just missed him."īrian had been sent to a house on South Rock Road to take a larceny report and was shot twice - once in the back and once in the foot, Maxfield told her. "They just took him to surgery, Sarah," he told her. Waiting for Sarah in the emergency room was Justin Maxfield, one of Brian's classmates at the law enforcement training academy. "I asked the dispatcher, 'Is he alive?' Nobody knew."Ī sheriff's deputy finally got her to Wesley at about 12:45 p.m., less than an hour after Brian was shot. I felt bad that I didn't call her right away, but. "I didn't know what to say to her," Sarah would say. She turned on the radio and heard a deputy had been shot, then called Sarah after she couldn't reach Brian. and still nobody was there."īrian's mother had called after she tried to return to work after lunch and discovered Rock Road had been blocked. "I changed my clothes, brushed my teeth, let the dogs outside, paced around the living room, called my mom, called my best friend, talked to Brian's mom on the phone. She wanted to jump in her car and go to Wesley Medical Center, where Brian had been raced by an ambulance escorted by patrol cars.
"All I remember her saying is, 'They're sending officers to your home now. The dispatcher kept talking to her, but most of the words went unheard. The worst fears of a law enforcement officer's spouse - the moment she had dreaded since Brian announced he wanted to be a cop - had become a reality. She slumped to the kitchen floor in their small house in southwest Wichita, thinking, "What am I going to do?" Etheridge?' I heard her put the phone down, I heard her pick up another phone and say, 'His wife's on the phone. "She said, 'Can you hold on just a second, Mrs. She called 911, telling the dispatcher she wanted to make sure Brian was OK. Sarah tried to reach Brian just after noon on that final Monday in September 2009. "I just wanted to make sure Brian is OK," a friend on the phone told Sarah Etheridge, whose husband had been a deputy for less than a year. May 29-A Sedgwick County Sheriff's deputy had been shot.
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