LYNN, Ind. (WTHR) — Eyewitness News is learning more about the life and death gun battle officers waged with a heavily armed Lynn resident less than two weeks ago.
According to the director of the Randolph County Emergency communications center, 13 police cars were either damaged or destroyed.
John Resetar shot at 33 officers about 200 times during a shootout that has crippled the small Lynn police department.
Some of the shots Resetar fired at police punched through police cars while officers hid behind them wondering if they would survive.
Lynn Police Chief Bradley Fisher is one of them.
“We know by the grace of God our lives were spared that day and now we are trying to pick up the pieces,” Fisher said.
His car was riddled with bullets.
Two shots ripped through the windshield as Officer Travis Jones pulled up to the scene. How they missed him, Jones doesn’t know.
More gunfire raked the SUV. Bullets from an AK-47 assault rifle pierced windows, door panels and the engine block.
Shotgun pellets hit a fender and the windshield. All while the two Lynn officers and Randolph County sheriff’s deputies crouched behind the SUV. They were pinned down, unable to fire back for an hour.
Chief Fisher admitted thinking they wouldn’t live through it.
“It was terrifying. It was terrifying. We all wanted to go home. I got a wife and kids at home. But we knew our warrior mentality. We were going to win the fight,” Fisher said.
It took more than 100 police officers almost two hours to end the fight.
The heavily armed Resetar was found mortally wounded inside the home. It is not known yet whether he took his life or was killed by police.
Jones and two other officers were hit by flying debris. Thursday was his first day back on the job. He’s ok, but the small department isn’t.
“The department is crippled. We have no vehicles,” Fisher said. “Our two police cars are gone. They are riddled with bullets. They are trashed. They are beyond repair."
The department is borrowing a police car from Parker City until it finds money to purchase new ones.
Even more than the terror of that day, Fisher said there is one memory he will hold for the rest of his life.
“The number of officers who ran to the sound of gunfire to save their own,” Fisher said. “I am in debt to them forever.”