An off-duty Dallas police officer is recovering after being shot during a robbery in the Fort Worth Stockyards.
Two teenagers, under the age of 17, are in custody.
The injured officer is in stable condition at the hospital.
“I heard a shot and I opened the door and I just started running down there,” said Dakota Moore, an employee in the stockyards.
Moore found the injured man, bloodied but alert.
“He had blood all over his short and he was standing there looking like did I just get shot,” he said.
Moore and others helped apply pressure to the wounds.
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“He’s like I just don’t want to die. He’s like, am I going to die? And the firefighters told him you’re not going to die,” said Moore.
The officer was rushed to the hospital.
“He’s a strong cop. He’s a great guy,” said Mike Mata, president of the Dallas Police Officers Association.
The union president responded to the shooting and visited the unidentified officer in the hospital on Sunday.
Dallas police said the officer has been on the force for almost seven years and is currently assigned to the northwest patrol division.
“He’s doing well,” said Mata. “Very thankful that none of his family was injured and very thankful to the Fort Worth Police Department, did an amazing job.”
Mata said the officer did not brandish a weapon and did not shoot at the robbers.
He was in plain-clothes with his wife, young child and visiting in-laws when robbers confronted his wife, taking her purse from her.
He was then shot twice, in the stomach and pelvic area.
“It just shows nobody is above this violence that is happening all over the state of Texas, all over this country,” said Mata. “Anybody, anybody can be a victim, including police officers with their families.”
Fort Worth police confirmed a cell phone video a viewer shared with NBC 5 captured one of the suspects being apprehended. The video shows an officer pulling what appears to be a gun from the suspect’s jeans.
“He was following us to our car and he had a gun in his pocket,” said the shocked woman recording the video from inside a nearby hotel.
Mata said this incident should be a ‘wake-up call.’
“That we have to do something about our youth. We have to save our youth,” he said. “We need faith leaders. They need to reach out to these young men and tell them there’s a better way.”
Both teens are charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, according to FWPD.
One of the suspects was also caught with the victim’s purse.
“We have way too many broken homes to the point where we have no male figures, no positive male role models in a lot of lives of these young men,” said Mata. “Hats off to single mothers. They’re out there working two and three jobs but these missing fathers, it takes more than being a man to raise a baby and to raise a young man in this world.
