{"id":73700,"date":"2025-12-06T18:40:43","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T18:40:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/73700\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T18:40:43","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T18:40:43","slug":"port-st-lucie-sergeant-escorted-back-to-hca-florida-lawnwood-hospital-after-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/73700\/","title":{"rendered":"Port St. Lucie sergeant escorted back to HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital after surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sergeant Erik Levasseur returned to HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital on Friday evening, after a specialized surgery<\/a> on his eyes. <\/p>\n

WATCH: Sergeant’s return met with display of support from community<\/p>\n

Multiple law enforcement agencies, including the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office and Port St. Lucie Police Department, escorted Sgt. Levasseur, who had been transferred to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami earlier this week for the surgery. Doctors said there was shrapnel in Levasseur’s retina, which required a special team of expert surgeons. <\/p>\n

Sgt. Levasseur was shot in the face twice<\/a> while responding to a call in the 11000 block of Southwest Lake Park Drive on Monday night. The gunman, Frankie Salvatore Riccio, 32, was killed after shooting Levasseur. <\/p>\n

Earlier this week, he’d had emergency surgeries to repair facial injuries, had a wired jaw and was relying on a tracheotomy, according to police. <\/p>\n

WATCH: Multiple law enforcement agencies escort sergeant <\/p>\n

On Thursday, Chief Leo Niemczyk said they have faith<\/a> that Sgt. Levasseur, a 27-year veteran of the police department, will make a “very strong recovery.” <\/p>\n

The Port St. Lucie Police Department posted<\/a> on social media about Sgt. Levasseur’s arrival back at the hospital: “We are beyond grateful for the incredible show of support from all the agencies that participated in today\u2019s motorcade that brought Sgt. Levasseur back to St. Lucie County. Today, he starts the next phase of his recovery at HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital after his prior successful surgeries.” <\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sergeant Erik Levasseur returned to HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital on Friday evening, after a specialized surgery on his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172],"class_list":{"0":"post-73700","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-port-st-lucie","8":"tag-port-st-lucie","9":"tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","10":"tag-port-st-lucie-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73700","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=73700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}