‘I’m still shaking like a leaf,’ witness says
Deborah Crutchfield was still a nervous wreck, hours after Memphis police officer Sean Bolton was shot and mortally wounded a few feet from her Parkway Village driveway Saturday night.
Just after 9:15 p.m., Bolton was shot multiple times after apparently interrupting a drug deal in the 4800 block of Summer lane, police said. Bolton, 33, was taken to the Regional Medical Center but did not survive.
“I’m still shaking like a leaf,” Crutchfield said Sunday. “It could have been anybody, but it was a law enforcement officer shot and killed on my street. It was a terrible thing to see.”
Crutchfield heard five shots just after she finished watching television, she said, adding that one of the bullets
shattered the glass on her porch light.
“Right after that, my granddaughter crawled from the living room to the den, ducking from the bullets,” she said. “I went outside because I thought the glass had shattered in my truck. I got out there and saw the officer shot and bleeding. They said he had been shot in the face.”
She said she and other neighbors called 911, but the line was busy.
“It was at that point that the man told the officer he was going to use his radio to call for help,” Crutchfield said. “The guy said, ‘Officer, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just using your radio to get 911.’”
She said when paramedics arrived they spent several minutes trying to resuscitate the officer.
“I was crying for him along with the officers that came to help,” she said. “We were all crying.”
Neighbors said Summerlane was a “blue parade” with police vehicles lined up and down their street.
The police dispatch recording regarding the shooting was released Sunday and provided a chilling account of the minutes after Bolton’s shooting.
“Please, please, hurry up!” said the man who used the officer’s radio. “He’s shot!”
Officers then sped to the location. Dispatchers sent paramedics as well. The radio chatter is confusing, but it’s clear the officers were agitated and worried.
“Move the cars for the ambulance, move the cars for the ambulance!” an officer screamed.
Dispatchers then asked for police to escort the ambulance to the Regional Medical Center: “Be advised that we have an officer down at Cottonwood and Perkins. He is on the way to The Med. Block all exits to the interstate.”
Officers then radioed that they were blocking the exits, but an overturned car was causing traffic problems. Officers kept alerting dispatchers that they had successfully blocked off various routes as the ambulance sped westward.
Meanwhile, police on the scene said they were looking for two male suspects, last seen running away. Dispatchers then received an alert about a nearby carjacking, possibly by the two suspects. The person reporting that incident apparently told police it was the men who shot Bolton.