GoFundMe started for injured undercover officer shot during shooting spree
By Caroline Reinwald
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RACINE COUNTY, Wisconsin (WISN) — A GoFundMe has been set up for the Racine County undercover investigator who was hit during a shootout last Tuesday morning.
Blurry cell phone video shows the moments after the undercover investigator was involved in the shootout. Officials said it was with a man who went on a killing spree last Tuesday morning.
Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling said the shooting spree started around 7:30 a.m. on July 13 at the Pilot gas station on Highway K.
Schmaling said the shooter, 32-year-old John McCarthy, shot and killed 22-year-old Anthony Griger of Elkhorn, then tried to steal Griger’s car, but couldn’t drive it.
The sheriff said after trying to steal another person’s car, McCarthy then drove two miles east to the Mobil gas station in Franksville, where he shot at the undercover investigator, who was getting gas before heading into work.
“This guy had no idea who he was dealing with whatsoever,” said Angie Sadowski, who helped start the GoFundMe.
Sadowski said she’s known the investigator for more than 20 years. She said she started the GoFundMe to help cover his family’s expenses, since his wife had to take off work to help him at home during his recovery. Sadowski said the sheriff’s office is covering the investigator’s medical expenses and worker’s compensation.
The sheriff said McCarthy and the investigator got into a shootout and shot each other several times. Officials said McCarthy then shot himself.
“He didn’t have time to think,” Sadowski said. “He, in a very split second, made some decisions that I don’t think anybody else would have been able to do. Other officers and deputies made comments to him about ‘I think I would have froze’ and he himself told us that he was just glad that it wasn’t somebody like us, because it was so quick and so sudden. He had no time to prepare.”
“He acted on instinct and training and that’s it. Anybody else would have been dead and who knows how far it would have gone down the road,” Sadowski said, referring to McCarthy, who the sheriff said may have continued killing people had the deputy not gotten involved.
“In the time that I’ve spoken with him, he’s just been very humble, like, ‘I was just doing my job,'” Sadowski said of the investigator.
A GoFundMe is also set up to help pay for funeral expenses for Griger, who died in the shooting spree.
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