Arlington Mayor: Officer Shot in Saginaw in High Spirits

The mayor of Arlington says the officer wounded in Tuesday's shootout in Saginaw will "be back at it again" soon.

Detective Charles Lodatto, a member of a multiagency task force investigating the slaying of 6-year-old Alanna Gallagher, was shot while trying to serve arrest and search warrants on Tyler Holder.

According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Lodatto, an FBI agent and a Saginaw police detective went to Holder's house, which is two doors down from the Gallagher girl's.

Holder fired, striking Lodatto in the groin. Lodatto, the 2012 Arlington police detective of the year, is recovering in a Fort Worth hospital.

"I was shocked when I got the word that he was the one who had been shot," Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck said.

Cluck said it is a shock and a concern when any of the city's officers are hurt, but Lodatto hit him just a little bit differently.

"Officer Lodatto and I became fairly close during very trying circumstances a year or so ago," he said.

Cluck worked closely with Lodatto last year during a murder-for-hire case in which an Arlington strip club owner attempted to hire a hit man to kill Cluck and a Dallas attorney.

"I found him to be not only a very strong family man, but he's also a highly Christian person and had a very positive impact on me personally," he said.

The club owner was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison earlier this year.

After hearing Lodatto had been shot, the mayor went straight to the hospital, where he found the same old Lodatto, he said.

"When I walked into his room, lots of people were around and he looked up at me and said, 'Hi mayor. What are you doing here?' That's him," Cluck said.

Cluck said Lodatto is in very positive spirits.

"That's the kind of individual he is -- he's a very positive person," he said. "This will be a temporary setback for him, and he'll be at it again."

The mayor said the detective he knows has no greater passion than to serve as an Arlington police officer.

Cluck said he saw Lodatto on duty several months ago and jokingly asked him, "Man, you just do everything around here, don't you?"

"He said, 'I love my job more than any other job in the world; only second to my family,'" Cluck said.