Sunday marks a milestone Fort Worth Police Detective Matt Pearce never takes for granted.
A decade ago, Pearce was shot six times while chasing a suspect wanted on felony warrants. He was the first officer to find the man – but, as Pearce puts it, “the suspect was first to shoot.”
Pearce said the moments leading up to the gunfire remain vivid.
“It still lives fresh in my memory, like it happened yesterday,” he said.
Body‑camera video from that day shows Pearce running through a wooded area moments before the suspect opened fire.
“Time slowed down to the point where when he raised that gun, I could see the nose of that bullet through the barrel,” Pearce recalled. “When they impacted me… it literally knocked me over backwards, like you see in a movie.”
Wounded and struggling to breathe, Pearce tried to call out “blue,” the distress word officers use to signal they’ve been shot.
“I couldn’t catch my breath,” he said. “Even when I’m trying to yell ‘blue,’ I couldn’t get a full breath.”
A decade of physical healing – and lingering memories
Pearce survived six gunshot wounds, including one to the head.
The bullet “traveled down my face, broke my jaw, wrapped around the back of my neck, [and] came up to less than the width of a human hair to my heart,” he said.
He spent weeks at JPS Hospital, followed by months of rehabilitation, learning to walk and talk again.
But while his body has healed, the memories remain close.
“It’s been ten years, but in my mind it hasn’t been ten months,” Pearce said.
“Please tell me he’s not going to die”
For his wife, Laura, the trauma of those days never fully fades.
She remembers a nurse sitting beside her during one of the darkest moments.
“I remember saying, ‘Please tell me he’s not going to die,'” Laura said through tears. “She looked at me and said, ‘I can’t tell you that. But what I can tell you is that we’re going to do everything we can.'”
Doctors and nurses did exactly that.
Back to the job he loves
Eighteen months after being shot, Pearce returned to the Fort Worth Police Department. Two years later, he revisited the spot where he nearly died.
Since then, life has been full – and busy.
Pearce has been promoted to detective. His daughters, Madison and Makayla, are now 11 and 13, active in school and sports. Laura works as a nurse at Cook Children’s.
“I’m thankful I got to see my kids grow up”
Pearce said the tenth anniversary of his “alive day” is less about the shooting and more about the life he’s lived since.
“I’m thankful I got to see my kids grow up,” he said. “That was the biggest thing. I remember having that conversation with myself laying in that field.”
Between school events, practices, and volleyball tournaments, the Pearce family stays constantly on the move – and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“We run our tails off… and it’s exhausting,” Pearce said. “But I love watching them. I have the blessing of being an exhausted parent. I’ll complain about it until the day I die, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
A quiet anniversary
The family isn’t planning anything special for the ten‑year mark.
Just being together, they say, is more than enough.