Former police officer says being shot sticks with you for years
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — A former policeman knows exactly how a Birmingham Police officer feels after being shot.
A seven year veteran of the Birmingham Police force is home after surviving gunfire on Princeton Avenue.
Wayne Lloyd, 48, says it happened to him almost 20 years ago.
While both made it out alive those memories never die. Lloyd says a bullet didn't have to break his skin to leave a scar.
He says the mental and emotional bruising is still with him to this day.
This man in blue spent 20 years in law enforcement. He was serving a search warrant in 1999, when at some point, he was shot in the back. Lloyd said, "Adrenaline is pumping so much that you don't really realize that it's just happened."
A bullet hit his armored vest. "Makes you think about the what if. What's the possibility? What would my family do if i was killed in the line of duty right then and there?"
A man in blue for twenty years, he left the force in 2011. While he did love wearing the badge, he says life is much safer these days.
He describes a moment he broke down in tears after his incident. "And the next day, I was going over my stuff, and I was checking over it," explained Lloyd. "I was getting ready to go back to work and I pulled my gun out. I looked and I saw where the impact was on the side. I pulled the magazine out and the round from where he had shot my gun fell out on my bed. If I had had to use that gun after that, it wouldn't have worked. You start thinking about, oh God, it brings it home. It was so much closer then than the night that it happened."
