Lincoln Police Officer Cole Jennings didn't hear the gunshots.
He heard glass breaking, then saw the gun.
"It appeared to be pointed at me," Jennings testified Wednesday at Felipe Vazquez's trial for the first-degree murder of Investigator Mario Herrera, the attempted assault of an officer, escape and four gun charges.Â
He didn't see who was holding it. Just the gun. And the smashed window within feet of the tree Jennings, Herrera and Capt. Danny Reitan had been using for cover outside the home at 3225 Vine St., where Vazquez, who they'd come to arrest, had been holed up on Aug. 26, 2020.
Jennings was watching the front yard. The main door was in back. Vazquez kept telling officers inside he was coming out of the locked door. But he didn't. Instead he burst through the window, crouched down.
Jennings moved to his right around the tree and felt debris spray up on his legs.
"And I start thinking that I was just shot at," he told the jury.Â
Jennings said he tried to track the person with the firearm.Â
"At one point I realize that Mario gets hit with a shot and he goes down," he said.Â
He said he doesn't remember hearing the shots before Herrera fell. Jennings fired four shots from his 9mm Smith & Wesson service weapon at the person with the gun running in the street along Vine Street toward 33rd.
It all happened within seconds, police later finding three .45-caliber casings fired from a stolen gun dumped on a back porch where Vazquez would be arrested soon after.
On Wednesday afternoon in Columbus, where the trial has been moved due to pretrial publicity, jurors heard the gut-wrenching audio captured on a digital recorder in Herrera's pocket.
The quiet suddenly is interrupted by the sharp sound of smashing glass. Then yells.
"Get down on the ground."
Followed soon after by agonizing screams.
"I can't breathe. I can't breathe," Herrera can be heard saying.Â
A cop calls in "officer down" on the radio.Â
"Stay with me, stay with me," Jennings tells him.
Herrera said it hurts really bad. "Tell my wife and my kids I love them."Â
Herrera would die of the injury 12 days later, on Sept. 7.Â
Lancaster County Sheriff's Sgt. Ryan Schmuecker, who had been near the back door when he heard the glass and shots, came out to see two people running away, one with a gun in his left hand, holding it by the slide.
He chased after, yelling to Officer Wendy Fisher, who was blocking traffic at 34th and Vine, to "shoot him, he just shot a cop."
Fisher didn't fire.Â
"My backdrop if I would have to shoot was Hartley Elementary," she said.Â
Schmuecker told her to get in her cruiser and run him down. But they both lost him when he ran between houses.Â
Police ultimately arrested Vazquez a few blocks away.Â
Photos, video: End of watch for Investigator Mario Herrera
Mario Herrera vigil, 9.7
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Mario Herrera procession 9.7
Mario Herrera vigil, 9.7
Mario Herrera procession 9.7
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Mario Herrera procession 9.7
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Mario Herrera vigil, 9.7
Mario Herrera vigil 9.7
Mario Herrera procession 9.7
Mario Herrera vigil, 9.7
Mario Herrera vigil, 9.7
Mario Herrera vigil, 9.7
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Mario Herrera vigil, 9.7
Mario Herrera vigil, 9.7
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Mario Herrera procession 9.7
Mario Herrera procession 9.7
Mario Herrera procession 9.7
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Mario Herrera procession 9.7
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Felipe Vazquez listens during his trial in the death of Lincoln Police Investigator Mario Herrera on Tuesday in Platte County District Court in Columbus.Â