Amazing America: A South Florida Doctor\u2019s Journey from Immigration to Service<\/a><\/p>\nInside the home, officers heard screaming children and a woman begging for help. Garcia says it was clear the situation was rapidly escalating.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s screaming, \u2018Help me, help me,\u2019 trying to get out \u2014 and he\u2019s yelling at us to get out of here,\u201d Garcia recalled.<\/p>\n
Based on information from the couple\u2019s six-year-old triplets and the strong smell of gasoline, officers believed the suspect intended to kill the woman.<\/p>\n
They entered the home and found the woman zip-tied inside the garage, which had been turned into a makeshift prison. Officers could hear the hissing of gas.<\/p>\n
Moments later, Garcia says the suspect grabbed a propane tank and a lighter.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as he brought them together, my biggest concern was the three little kids above us,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cHe was going to blow the house up. Nobody was going to make it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
With seconds to act, Garcia made the split-second decision to fire, killing the suspect.<\/p>\n
Officers then raced to rescue the woman and children, but the front door was still barricaded. Body camera video captures the frantic effort to get everyone out safely as the woman struggled to breathe.<\/p>\n
All victims survived.<\/p>\n
While the decision saved lives, Garcia says the emotional toll remains heavy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was upset about shooting someone,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t wake up that morning thinking this was what was going to happen. Multiple lives were affected \u2014 his family\u2019s, mine, the officers, the neighbors. That stays with you for the rest of your life.\u201d<\/p>\n
An internal investigation later cleared Lieutenant Garcia in the shooting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (CBS12) \u2014 What began as a routine domestic violence call quickly became a life-or-death…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172],"class_list":["post-179835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}