Shot in line of duty, York police officer overcomes severe injury to return to service

Since he was in high school, Kyle Pitts knew he wanted to be a police officer.

But in his early 20s, Pitts found himself working construction jobs that weren’t fulfilling.
He had a nagging feeling.

He didn’t want to be 45, looking back and questioning “what if?”

So at 26, Pitts set his mind to getting a job in law enforcement, and was hired by the York City Police Department. He quickly found that’s where he was meant to be. He continued to seek out opportunities to be more, to do more with the department.

Within a few years, Pitts was working alongside U.S. marshals, hunting down the most dangerous offenders in and around York County.

That’s what he was doing on Jan. 18, 2018, when he nearly lost not only his career, but his life.

Serving a warrant -- the type of thing he’d done with the marshals more a thousand times before -- Pitts and U.S. Marshal Christopher Hill were shot.

Hill died from his wounds.

Pitts was gravely injured. Doctors warned he wouldn’t work as a cop again.

But almost a year from the day he nearly lost everything, Pitts is back working for the York City Police Department. He’s back alongside the same team of U.S. marshals he’d called teammates a year earlier, out arresting dangerous felons.

A lot has changed in 12 months: He viscerally recognizes the dangers of his job, he no longer shoots with his right arm, and he’s doing his job with a renewed sense of purpose, remembering daily the brother his team lost a year ago.

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Getting into police work

On Friday, Oct. 24, 2008, Pitts started his first day as a solo officer with the York City Police Department. He had the police academy, on-the-job training, and preparation behind him.

There was a bank robbery in West Manchester Township. Police spotted the suspects, and a pursuit up Interstate 83 ensued.

Pitts was among the officers who responded.

The suspects opened fire on the cops who were after them. Other officers, positioned along the road, shot at the suspects.

A Pennsylvania State Police sergeant shot and killed the driver, ending the pursuit.

It was startling to see how quickly things could escalate, how quickly officers could find themselves in danger. But that experience also gave him a sense that he was meant to do that work.

The pace slowed after that first day, at least for a while. Pitts learned that his job wasn’t always going to be the way it was portrayed on TV.

But there have been other stirring moments, and times after a day at work where Pitts has reflected on how people he’d come to care about could have died if things had happened just a little differently.]

His memories of some calls are vivid.

A few years back, he responded after a police vehicle carrying fellow officers, two of his best friends, had overturned after a pursuit and crash.

The vehicle was on its roof when Pitts got to the scene. Both officers were still trying to get out, one stuck pretty badly, when the vehicle went up in flames.

Fortunately, the officers could be rescued and they ended up being OK.

But there was “a big freak-out moment,” Pitts said, when the weight of what might have happened, was on him. It took a long time for him to move past that incident, he said.
Other incidents that he didn't witness first-hand also stick with him.

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On Nov. 22, 2015, Trev Bowies Jackson fired three shots at Northern York County Regional Police Officer Lynn Anderson in the parking lot of the Crossroads Shopping Center in Manchester Township.

One of the bullets narrowly missed Anderson's face, but Jackson fired the gun so closely to Anderson's head that it left him with powder burns.

Pitts was on the team that spent months searching for Jackson.

Pitts said he never once thought about finding a career outside of police work. 
Not until Jan. 18, 2018.

“Up until then,” Pitts said, "it had never crossed my mind that I could walk away.”

Fighting to return to work

Tiffany Pitts and her husband aren’t the type to get overly emotional or mushy with one another. 

She’s in law enforcement, too, working for a special victims unit with the York City Police Department. They met on the job, and have children together.

She and her husband have always had an understanding.

“Anything happens to either one of us, job-related, personal life, whatever, we take care of each other,” she said.

But as she headed toward Penn State Hershey Hospital on Jan 18, 2018, after learning Kyle had been shot while serving a warrant with the U.S. marshals, she didn’t know if her husband would be alive for her to care for.

Some wires got crossed when she was given information and updates about the shooting. She initially heard that her husband was alive, but shot in the chest. Then she learned the person shot in the chest didn’t make it.

During her drive, she got a call from an officer who had been with Kyle who said he was alive.

At the hospital, Tiffany saw her husband had been shot in the arm.

It’s just an arm, she thought. He could live without an arm.

But she saw a pain in him she didn’t know how to soothe.

“There was something going on in that moment that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fix,” she said. “That scared me more than anything.”

Tiffany watched her husband prepare to go into surgery, watched the anguish rush over him when he learned that Hill had died. She watched, but she didn't know how to help him.

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But in the days and weeks that followed, Kyle went to work.

The road ahead wasn’t going to be easy.

Kyle had been shot in his right forearm. He was right-handed.

The bullet entered just below his elbow, and blew it apart. There was no exit wound, but there were two holes from bone fragments.

The bullet severed his radial nerve, which controls some movement of the wrist.

Kyle underwent surgery, and then therapy. But the medical professionals weren’t looking to get him back to work.

For the first couple months, Kyle said, he wasn’t sure himself whether he’d be able to make it back to work.

“I was really in victim mode,” he said. “Then came a time where it was, OK, you’re not going to get past this until you start doing something for yourself to get through this.”
So he set an intention.

More:Update on York City Police Officer Kyle Pitts after Harrisburg shooting

He decided that the only place he wanted to be was the only place he’d ever felt like he belonged. He needed to get back to work.

Tiffany said he started to do research, looking at cases of other officers who had been injured.

He told her, "If they can do it, I can do it."

It might sound cheesy, he says, but he had the same realization he’d had when he decided to become a police officer.

“Everything kind of came full circle for me,” Kyle said of his time sitting on his couch, thinking, “I don’t want to be 50 and look back and say I didn’t try. I had to try.”

He focused on physical therapy. He bought equipment to do more exercises at home.

He went to the firing range and worked on handling a gun with his left hand. 

“It would have been easy to walk away and be done with it,” Kyle said. And lots of people would have understood. “But it’s just not me. I can’t. I have to try.”

He did everything he could with his left hand to develop his dexterity. He was in pain a lot. Even though he worked with his left hand, he needed to use his right hand to help him grip. The reverberations hurt because of the nerve damage he suffered.

In August, about eight months after he was shot, Kyle told his wife he was going to ask the doctors if he could go back to work.

She thought he meant return to the department doing administrative work.

But Kyle went to the doctors and showed them what he could do with his body. He did push-ups, he showed his dexterity.

They cleared him.

Driven to serve despite the danger

John Pitts sees the ways his son is like him. 

Neither has much bravado. They both want to help others, something quiet and internal driving them to be better, to show up.

John is uncomfortable putting himself in the same category as his son. Like many fathers, he wants his son to be recognized for all that makes him an amazing man. But the humble quality they both possess causes John to pause.

“He always wanted to be the best he could be,” John said. Kyle always wanted to be part of a team and to help the team to succeed.

Watching his son become a police officer was wonderful and scary.

Wonderful because it’s what his son wanted so badly and worked so hard for. Scary because fathers worry about their sons.

Police work is dangerous. But John put those thoughts about what could happen to his son out of his head. He didn’t want to stew over something that might not come, and he didn’t want to distract his son.

But on Jan. 18, 2018, his worst fear was realized.

On John's way to the hospital, his daughter-in-law called to say Kyle would be OK.

But at the hospital, John realized things might not go back to the way they were.

Like he did when Kyle played baseball as a kid, John showed up. Even though he works third shift, he made it a point to be there for his son.

“For the next month, I stopped by every day, just to show him I was there,” John said.

Over the summer months, John spent more time with his son, building a deck on his house.

He watched his son fight back, build strength and meet his goals as he worked to rehabilitate himself.

More:Obituary for York City Police Officer Alex Sable recalls loyal friend, loving husband

“To see him do those things makes me proud,” John said. Kyle didn’t have anything to prove to anybody else. “It was to prove it to himself.”

In September, Kyle returned to work.

Tiffany said her husband still hurts, even now, a year later.

That pain is physical and emotional.

“He will never forget that day,” she said. “But he’s so goal-oriented and needs to accomplish so much in his life that I’m so proud of him. I’ve seen him do many, many things in his life. The perseverance he showed me, I’m jealous.”

She said her husband makes it a point to kiss their children goodbye before he heads to work, even if they’re asleep.

John still worries. But that worry is overshadowed by pride and confidence that his son is a fighter, is strong and capable.

Kyle said he wasn’t scared about returning to work. He had some shaky moments at first, but he’s overcome them.

Now, he just wants to serve his community.

“For me, there’s nothing better than helping somebody without being recognized for it,” he said.

He’s driven to make the community safer.

“The satisfaction of achieving that goal of finding a violent fugitive who could really hurt someone or really victimize someone, it’s rewarding,” Kyle said.

And he wants to honor his fallen brother, Christopher Hill.

“I know people say this all the time … but I can tell you for a fact that every single day since Jan. 18, I’ve thought about that day,” he said. “I’ve thought about Chris. I’ve thought about my teammates. I’ve thought about what happened. Every single day.”