A Grove City (US) Police officer may have saved a boy’s life after his quick actions ended a tense situation.
A 12-year-old boy ran away and took two large knives from a Dollar Tree store on Hoover Road. The officer was able to get the boy to drop those knives before anyone was hurt.
The entire ordeal was captured on a dash cam inside the cruiser of one of the officers who rushed to the scene. On the dash cam video, the boy can be seen holding the large knives in the middle of the parking lot. “I’m just trying to keep my distance, talk to him, see what’s going through his head,” said Officer Brandon Judd, one of the officers who responded to the scene.
“Obviously he’s going through some sort of crisis.” The boy repeatedly held one of the knives to his throat. “I wasn’t sure what his intentions were, if he was going to hurt himself or hurt me or try to hurt another innocent bystander,” he said.
A cruiser pulls up close to the boy.
“We didn’t communicate at all,” Judd said. “We all knew what was going on. They knew what I was doing. I knew what they were doing without actually saying a word.” Judd used the cruiser as a distraction.
“I figured if I could slowly walk out of his view, maybe he would forget about me,” he said.
The officer even turned down his radio so the boy wouldn’t hear him coming. “(I’m) going against our training,” Judd said. “I knew I’d be able to overpower the kid if I could get close enough.”
He moved in and grabbed the boy’s wrists to get him to drop the knives. “I didn’t think too much about it until it was all over with,” Judd said.
“Once I walked away I was shaking and I couldn’t believe what just happened and how well everything turned out.” Another officer can be seen squatting next to the boy. Grove City Police said that officer told the boy he’d be okay, and they’d take care of him.
“It was a huge relief,” Judd said. “People may not realize that even though he’s a small child, he could still hurt somebody or hurt himself with those knives.” Judd said police officers are trained to keep their distance from anyone with a knife.
He said he only moved in because it was a child, and he was confident he could overpower him.
He said if the same situation happened with an adult, he wouldn’t have tried that.
Police records said the boy was taken to Nationwide Children’s Hospital and eventually released.
He will be facing a series of charges including assault, inducing panic, aggravated menacing and theft.
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