Homestead reservist transports wounded officer to hospital after shooting

  • Published
  • By Ross Tweten
  • 482nd Fighter Wing Public Affairs
HOMESTEAD AIR RESERVE BASE, Fla. --  Perfectly in stride with his measured demeanor, Tech. Sgt. Osvaldo Petitfrere, a traditional reservist assigned to the 482nd Security Forces Squadron at Homestead Air Reserve Base, describes the end result of the dangerous events that unfolded on Florida's Turnpike May 10.
 
"I did what I did. In my mind, I know it could have been so much worse than the way it played out. I'm just glad that all the officers that were injured are home safe."

On that day, Petitfrere, who is also a full-time sheriff's deputy with the Broward County Sheriff's Office, found himself in the middle of a deadly situation. A lone gunman shot at, and wounded, two law enforcement officers on Florida's Turnpike before ultimately turning the gun on himself and committing suicide.

During the incident, Petitfrere returned fire on the gunman, David Edwin Bradley, 23, of Miami Gardens, Fla., and is credited with saving the life of Key Biscayne police officer Nelia Real due to his quick actions of transporting her to the hospital in his patrol car.

"She was holding her neck and I wasn't going to sit and wait to see if she would be able to wait for the ambulance to arrive," said Petitfrere. "I was thinking either I take her to the hospital myself or watch her die, and I didn't want to watch her die."

According to Petitfrere, Real was losing a lot of blood and he knew that the conditions were bad. It was rush hour and traffic was stopped on both sides of the turnpike, which made Petitfrere question as to whether or not emergency medical services would have difficulty getting to the scene on time to render aid. Faced with a hard choice, Petitfrere rushed Real to the hospital, arriving in roughly seven minutes.

"Seconds felt like minutes," he said. "As police officers, we face moments where we have to make hard decisions in a split second all the time. I was worried about her making it or not. But looking at her, I just felt like she was going to make it."

Petitfrere is all too familiar with making hard decisions amid moments of extreme danger. As a previous active duty cavalry scout with the Army and now an Air Force Security Forces reservist, the Miami native has spent much of his adult life serving and protecting. All the superlative adjectives we use to describe members of the United States' military receive vindication when applied to the staid Petitfrere, as he's dedicated much of his life to the more selfless pursuits of the American experience.

After eight years in the active duty Army, Petitfrere took a position as a sheriff's deputy with the Broward Sheriff's Office in June of 2007.

"I thought if I could survive Iraq, I'm pretty sure I could survive the streets of Florida," he said. "I love doing what I do."

According to Petitfrere, the constant motion, interaction with citizens, and the opportunity to help people are the things he loves most about being in law enforcement.

"I love the fact that I'm moving around," he said. "I'm dealing with different situations and people all the time. I'm not the office type. Talking to people, helping them with issues they may not me familiar with, that's what I like."

But the draw of the armed forces kept tugging at him. A year later he re-enlisted in the Air Force Reserve as a security forces Airman.

"I missed the military," Petitfrere said. "When I took a short break, a year break, I realized that I missed it. I figured since I'm a cop on the outside that I'd be a cop in the Air Force."

Petitfrere's experiences and training in the military has been invaluable to his career as a sheriff's deputy and vice versa. According to him, the Air Force provides him with a lot of confidence to do his job.

"You really don't know what you're going to do or how you're going to react to a situation until you're put in that situation," he said.

Petitfrere has encountered similar moments of danger like the scene on Florida's Turnpike during his military career. While in a convoy in Iraq, Petitfrere was traveling in the lead truck when another truck took the brunt of an explosion from a roadside bomb which resulted in a soldier receiving serious injuries to his foot.

"Our doc managed to bandage it up and stop the bleeding," said Petitfrere. "And, same thing, we couldn't get assistance from medevac. Another Humvee ended up taking the injured guy to the hospital."

Austere moments such as this have placed Petitfrere in situations requiring difficult decisions to be made.

"If you get ambushed, are you going to sit there or push through?" he asked. "What they train us to do is push through, because you don't want to stay in the kill zone. I mean, the roadside bombs in Iraq are pretty crazy, but on the turnpike, that might be one of the craziest things I've seen."

According to Lt. Col. Harold Talbert, 482nd Security Forces Squadron commander, Petitfrere reacted exactly as we all hope we would if faced with similar circumstances.

"I truly believe it was his training and experience as a police officer, soldier, and defender that instilled the confidence to take an immediate, decisive course of action while under tremendous stress and personal danger," said Talbert. "Bottom line, his selfless, heroic actions directly saved the life of a fellow police officer. There's really no greater accomplishment than that."

Finding a lesson learned from such a random act of violence can be difficult. Petitfrere recognizes the harsh potential of what the events on Florida's Turnpike could have produced.

"I always think about it, that when you put the uniform on, automatically you're a target," he said. "Drive around in that police car and you're a target. An active shooter on the highway; that's the worst-case scenario. At any given moment, anything can happen, and you just have to try to be as prepared as you can be."

Ultimately, there were several individuals who exercised prompt and selfless acts on May 10; individuals who protect and serve and remain the thin line between order and chaos. Usually, Petitfrere's mandate is to seek out the chaos, but on that day the chaos found him.

True to form, Petitfrere remains a cool hand amid the attention given him by his actions. Regarding the status of Officer Real, Petitfrere evenly remarks: "She's home now with her family, so that's cool."