EXCERPT FROM IAB SHOOT INTERVIEW
Date: April 15th
Interviewer: Jonathan Spencer
Interviewee: Detective Michael Hale

SPENCER: We really appreciate you cooperating at this early time, Detective, but I want to let you know that you can end this at any time.

HALE: I would like to go on, sir.

SPENCER: Okay. You mention pursing then gunman, now known to be Salvador Vega, into the warehouse. Please describe the events leading up to your shooting of Vega and your ultimate discovery.

HALE: I approached the door with my weapon drawn. I heard what I believed to be a little girl crying for help—

SPENCER: You told an officer on scene you heard a child calling for her father.

HALE: Yes, yes. She was yelling in Spanish. The two words I recognized were “help” and “father.”

SPENCER: Okay. What happened next?

HALE: I entered the warehouse and heard sounds of an altercation. I could hear women’s voices raised and—well, it sounded to me like someone, somewhere in that warehouse, was on the receiving end an ECW-style beat down.

I could hear patrol cars arriving outside, so I pressed further.

Vega emerged from some shadows further in, his back was to me. He was shouting something in Spanish about a bruja, a witch. I leveled my weapon, identified myself, and called for him to drop his weapon.

That caught his attention, but instead of dropping, he turned and pointed his weapon at me. I discharged my weapon twice. Dropped him on the spot. Two bullets, center mass.

Four officers entered behind me. Two of them secured Vega while I moved toward the sound of the brawl and the weeping child.

SPENCER: And what did you discover there?

HALE: I almost tripped over the prone body of Elizabeth Boughtwood. I recognized her from her DMV photo, but just barely: She’d been worked over real bad. I would have assumed there she was another vic, except that she was holding a bloody knife.

Only a few feet away, I discovered the missing child, Catalina Sanchez. She was weeping over her father, Emilio Sanchez. He was injured bad. Bleeding everywhere…