Police: Officer Shot By Shoplifter Expected To Fully Recover
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HIALEAH (CBSMiami) -- After a firefight with a shoplifter at a Walmart, a Miami-Dade Police officer, a husband, and father of two, is going to fully recover.
Visiting family members were delighted.
"He's in good spirits. He's in good shape, thank God," said a visiting family member.
The man who police say drew down on him will not be okay.
Despite being wounded multiple times, Det. Manuel Gonzalez managed to shoot and kill 54-year-old David Facen - a career criminal with a violent rap sheet spanning decades.
Miami-Dade's top cop predicted that history in the wake of Wednesday's shooting.
"When this is all said and done, it's going to be the same story again and we're going to look at this individual, we're going to run his name and he's probably going to have a past," said Miami Dade Police Dir. Juan Perez on Wednesday.
Facen had a record of convictions for murder, battery on a cop, drug dealing, possession of illegal weapons and the list goes on and yet he was still free Wednesday to steal a flat-screen TV and try to kill a cop.
At an award ceremony for officers on Thursday, the police director tried to make sense of it.
"He shouldn't have been on the streets but that's how it goes right our justice. Sometimes we give people second chances and sometimes we forget to count and those second chances are repeated over and over," said Dir. Perez.
Perez claims surveillance video captured the whole chain of events but the videos have not been released to the public.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) is investigating the incident as is policy with any police-involved shooting.
