Aurora Cops 'Wish They Could Have Done More' After Shooting

AURORA, IL — Aurora police and first responders are being hailed as heroes after Fridays shooting at Henry Pratt Company, but they are still plagued by the thought that they could have done more, Police Chief Kristen Ziman said in a press briefing Tuesday. Ziman said one officer who was seriously injured at the scene said, "Don’t take me out; I want to keep going back in" and that there was a point when even people at the command post had to be held back from going in.

“That was the mentality we had, the resilience we, had the relentlessness we had on that scene," Ziman said. She credited the police force's training division, saying, "Everyone did exactly what they were supposed to do at that very moment."

She noted that the Aurora Police and Fire Departments had recently participated in "unprecedented" rescue task force training and knew "exactly what to do" in their two missions: to save lives and to find and "eliminate the threat."

"At one point when I looked around and I saw a sea of officers in all different uniforms, there were hundreds of them, I knew that our community was strong ... our surrounding community."

She went on to thank the Aurora Fire Department, the Naperville Police and Fire Departments, who went in to help "neutralize the threat," and surrounding fire departments for their assistance after the shooting.

Ziman said, "There is a lot of pain" in the police department, which had a stress debriefing Tuesday. To the injured officers who mentioned to her "with a heavy heart" that they wish they "could have done more," she said, "You are heroes; you are warriors."

Ziman, who visited the families of the five men slain in the shooting said,"The hardest thing I’ve had to do was look in their eyes. And I know that we did all we could, but we still carry that with us, that 'Could we have done more?'"