Retired Erie Police Officer Recalls Shootout Which Injured 3 Officers Two Decades Ago
Twenty years ago this Tuesday, the lives of several Erie Police officers were forever changed.
What started with a traffic stop in the early morning hours of July 7, 2000, ended with three officers shot during an intense manhunt.
In an exclusive interview, Erie News Now sat down with one of those officers to learn more about what happened that night, and what he thinks about the current perception of police.
Terry Dawley retired from the Erie Police force several years ago, unwillingly, after injuries he sustained in the close-quarter gun battle ended his career.
He had 18-years on the job, a K-9 officer he worked overnights in the high-crime areas of the city of Erie.
On July 7, 2000, he actually ended his shift and went home. But a traffic stop on east 12th street around 3:00 a.m. turned ugly.
A Erie Police patrolman pulled a man over to check a broken taillight. The officer spotted drugs in the car, and when the driver was told to get out of the vehicle, the suspect, then 24-year-old Charlton Jennings ran into a grassy and wooded area.
Patrolman Jay White was there for backup. He followed the suspect in his cruiser then got out. As Dawley explains, that’s when White encountered the suspect, “The guy came back and sucker punched him (White), and then wrestled his gun away from him and stood over him and shot him.”
Jennings shot White with the officer’s own 9-mm service handgun, then ran into the wooded area again, sparking a manhunt.
That’s when Dawley returned to work, heading right to the scene.
Shortly after Dawley arrived, Officer Paul McMahon spotted Jennings in a grassy area. Dawley was there in moments, “I told him the third time to get down on the ground, and then he reached down real quick and lifted up his t-shirt and I shot him," Dawley recalled vividly while sitting in his living room two decades later. “It was only seconds, 23 rounds were exchanged, I fired 9 and he fired 14, I was hit three times and I hit him four times,” Dawley continued.
Dawley said the gun battle happened in the darkness of a wooded area, as officer McMahon was also on the ground trying to control the suspect, “He (Jennings) started shooting me as fast as he could pull the trigger, and so I didn’t know where to look. So I had to shoot at the muzzle flashes and that's what I did, I aimed at the muzzle flashes. But I kept moving and shooting and then one went through my thigh, and one went through my knee, and the one that went through my knee, my knee just gave out... I went down and I told myself, you better get back up or he's going to come over and shoot you like a dog.”
Dawley was also shot in his left hand, which was a career-ending injury.
He said it all happened in a matter of seconds, “If I would have hesitated, I would be dead right now.”
Flash forward to 2020.
Erie News Now spoke with Dawley about police work today, “I really am concerned about my brothers and sisters in blue, because of what's going on now, I'm positive that they're going to hesitate, and it scares me and worries me because if you hesitate, you're dead,” said Dawley.
Peaceful protests and violent riots erupted across the nation, even here in Erie, after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25, 2020.
There’s public outcry to defund police and officers’ actions are under much scrutiny.
Dawley says with officers constantly under the microscope, he worries, “This job can be ugly at times, a lot of times you're dealing with some very bad people. Law enforcement has been sedated and their teeth have been yanked… I don’t know how they’re going to do their job,” Dawley said.
Dawley says the suspect, Charlton Jennings, was out on parole at the time of his arrest and was sentenced to 34-71 years in state prison, where 20 years later, he remains.