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Published on: 6/21/2004
Last Visited: 6/21/2004
SPICER, Minn. (AP) Mike Roe will be spending a lot of the summer sitting on his living room couch, looking out the window onto his back yard and the lake behind it.He'd rather be working.
Roe, a Kandiyohi County sheriff's deputy, and other members of the county's Critical Incident Response Team stormed a Swift Falls home June 8, looking for the suspected killer of a suburban Detroit police officer who they thought might be holed up there.
He remembers the morning clearly: hiding behind a van in the yard, walking stealthily by a garage, getting ready at the front door and raiding the house.
"As I'm going through the door, I hear a bang," he said.
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"I hollered that I'd been hit and called for the medics," Roe said.
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"This could have been a fatal," Roe said."I honestly owe my life to the team."
The suspect wasn't there.Roe was airlifted to North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale, where he spent 10 days undergoing surgery to reconstruct his leg.
As soon as he could use a phone, Roe said, he made two calls: one to Felt, to thank him for saving his life and one to Rob Twedt, whose gun accidentally discharged.
"I told him not to worry about it," Roe said."I'll heal."
Twedt visited Roe a few days later.
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"He came down and we had a good time," Roe said."By the end we could joke about it."
Roe faces an uncertain recovery.Doctors aren't sure if he'll regain feeling in his foot and won't guess how long the healing might take.
Six weeks from now, Roe hopes he will be down to one crutch.He hopes he can go back to work, which he was told was possible.
For 29 years, he's been in law enforcement and has handled water safety.
"I'm not ready to retire.I'm having too much fun," he said."I have two boats, a jet ski and two snowmobiles; who wants to give up that job?"
Sheriff Dan Hartog expects Roe will be back.