NEW ALBANY, Ohio (WSYX) — Officers who responded to a deadly warehouse shooting in New Albany in February are speaking publicly for the first time about those harrowing moments.
Police say 28-year-old Bruce Foster opened fire inside the KDC/ONE warehouse on the night of February 4. Foster, an employee at the facility, is accused of shooting and killing two of his co-workers and injuring four others.
Officers on the New Albany Police Department’s third shift were the first to respond to the scene.
It was 10:22 p.m. when they got a call about an active shooter at the warehouse facility.
“I just remember hearing, ‘Third shift, prepare to copy a shooting.’ We were like, ‘Oh!’ And then it was 8825 Smith Mill Rd., multiple victims,” Officer Drew Duncan said.
“What I remember was them saying there was an active shooter out at KDC,” Officer Sara Vinca said. “I think it just threw all of us off. We kind of froze, looked at each other, and then just took off.”
It took the responding officers just four minutes to get from the department to the parking lot of the warehouse facility.
New Albany Police Sgt. Ian McCord described what it was like driving to the scene. “There are times when you are in your cruiser and you can get pretty lonely. I said a couple of prayers on the way there.”
At the time, there was no suspect description or information about his location.
“I remember very distinctly when we were driving onto the location, Officer Duncan was driving, and I remember him saying, ‘Don’t let us get ambushed,'” Officer Chris Suarez said. “I think that was the moment for me in my head where it got real serious.”
New Albany Police Chief Greg Jones said he was at home when the initial call came in.
“There is a split second where you are almost in disbelief,” Jones said. “A lieutenant had called me and said we have an active shooter. On the way there, there is a whole host of things that run through your mind. The initial information we received from dispatch, even at that point, we didn’t know if we had multiple shooters and how many people were down inside.”
The first responders described the chaos inside and outside the warehouse when they arrived at the scene.
“There were people everywhere,” Sgt. Kevin Deckop said. “There are a lot of things going on. Still not knowing much about the suspect and how to get him. There are a lot of things to coordinate.”
“Once we got on scene, it was kind of chaotic,” Vinca said. “A lot of people did not speak English. There was a heavy language barrier, which was tough.”
There were hundreds of people working at the time of the shooting, New Albany police said. McCord said many of them had not realized there was an emergency at all.
“We encountered multiple people who had no idea a shooting even happened, and they were just continuing about their day,” McCord said. “So for them to turn around and see officers with guns pointed at them, they are very frightened, and rightfully so.”
Jones described the training method his team took to begin safely clearing the building while searching for the suspect.
“When I first started and we had active shooter, it was treated like a barricade situation and you didn’t go in after the person,” Jones said. “You waited for a SWAT team or something like that. Then it switched to going in a quad formation and try to clear. Ideally, in training, you wait for four officers and then go in. More recently, in the last decade or so, it’s been a single officer response. If you are the first officer on the scene, you are going in, even if no one else is there.”
After New Albany’s officers arrived, Jones said several other Central Ohio agencies also responded to help clear the inside of the building and search for a suspect.
“There was an officer at every single door inside that building,” Officer Chris Suarez said. “It was just flooded with police officers.”
Suarez was among the officers searching for the suspect after receiving tips from witnesses that he may have run from the warehouse and toward a tree line and other buildings nearby.
“We did not know where he was,” Suarez said. “Along with rendering aid to the victims, we wanted to make sure that if the suspect was in the area, we were able to apprehend him because he is, just steps away from another warehouse where he could commit more violent crimes on other individuals. When we saw those buildings, we thought they looked like a place where someone who committed a crime might hide. As we just went head first and relied on our training.”
There is a big difference for what you prepare for and what you train for and what you see in real life. – Chief Greg Jones
“We train for active shooters, but really the speed at which this unfolded and all the factors that played in, like the over 200 people that worked in the building,” Jones said. “There is a big difference for what you prepare for and what you train for and what you see in real life.”
Much of their response was focused on the shooting victims, an aspect Sgt. Kevin Deckop said that made the incident feel real.
“Seeing that first victim, that was most definitely the one thing I remember the most,” Deckop said. “It just clicked right there that the situation is real. It’s not training. It’s not a fake call, a swatting call. Something is actually going on.”
“Two people lost their lives and other shooting victims will never forget this,” Jones said. “It’s such a tragedy. One of the spouses of a victim that did not make it showed up at the scene. It really drives home.”
Vinca described treating some of the gunshot victims before an ambulance arrived.
“It’s just keeping everybody at ease,” Vinca said. “And that’s not always easy. But that calm presence helps a lot.”
Vinca described an interaction with an employee as they worked to clear the warehouse.
“He was worked up,” he said. “I remember him. He was just like I can’t believe this happened. I didn’t expect this to happen here. But I just said I know, I know, but we will get you to safety and take you step by step into the right direction. Stay calm and trust us.”
After speaking to witnesses and sifting through surveillance video from the warehouse, law enforcement officials were able to determine who the suspect was. Police said they believed Foster had left in a ride-share vehicle.
“I was able to look through a lot of the cameras they had,” McCord said. “Once we saw a vehicle leave, we were pretty confident that he was inside of it and that he was the only shooter, so the investigation took off from there.”
Detectives eventually located Foster at a Columbus-area apartment the next morning, where he was arrested.
In the hours following the shooting, officers described what it was like communicating with their families. Deckop said once things settled down, he was able to call his wife.
“It was around 6 in the morning when I called her,” he said. “It gets pretty emotional with her because she’s asking a lot of questions, and she’s worried about all of us, our team. She’s worried about all of the victims. It was tough to talk to her. Tougher to talk to her than some people here just because they went through it.”
“Having a good support system is 100% what makes a good officer,” McCord said. “No one else shared the experience that we shared. You’re checking on each other and making sure everyone is OK.”
New Albany’s third shift is now connected in ways beyond just the love they have for their careers.
It’s something we all do. It’s something we all signed up for and for our own reasons. Mine was because l love this community. – Sgt. Kevin Deckop
“The term trauma bonding is real,” Suarez said. “Like the victims on the scene, I am sure they are much closer. We as a shift, we definitely are.”
Jones said in the weeks following the incident, their team has been able to evaluate their response to the shooting and plan for the future.
“We really learned a lot as far as what we need to do, and we are already working to prepare for something like this again,” Jones said. “Hopefully, we won’t see something like this again.
“For us, it showed that the baseline is there. We have very good people. We have good training, and that training kicked in. But I think moving forward, it lets us know, hey, this is how we need to change our training and figure out what additional equipment that we need and additional considerations that we need to take into account.”
Among the six people shot at the warehouse was 38-year-old Kyle Vaver, of Pickerington. According to the Licking County Coroner’s office, Vaver was the first person who died at the scene.
Thirty-year-old Shekhar Chapagai was also killed. According to the Franklin County Coroner’s Office, he died on Feb. 5, a day after he was shot. Chapagai’s family members said he had been working at KDC/ONE for about a year and that he loved his job. They said at the time of his death, he was just weeks away from welcoming a second daughter into the world.
Foster remains locked up in a Licking County Jail on a $20-million bond. A second psychiatric examination has been ordered to determine whether he is competent to stand trial.
