The police officer who was seriously wounded in one of three related shootings in Springfield, Massachusetts, last week was released to applause Thursday from a Boston hospital where he'd been recuperating.
Still wearing an eye patch, Springfield Police Officer Nestor Santos waved to several banks of uniformed officers outside Massachusetts General Hospital as he left.
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"We're extremely grateful for the heroic doctors and nurses and the miracles that work at the Mass. General Hospital for their hard work, their skills, their training. Officer Santos is going home to his family today," Springfield Police Capt. Brian Keenan said.
Santos was shot in the face and the leg in third of the three shootings late last Wednesday in a chaotic scene that spread across Springfield. Two Massachusetts Department of Transportation workers were hurt as well, one seriously, by a car carrying three people believed to be involved in one of the shootings, police have said.
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Isak Font, 18, was one of seven people eventually arrested. He's suspected of shooting Santos, who was driving to work at the time, with an AR-15-style rifle from a Jeep around 11 p.m. on State Street near Hunter Place, Springfield police have said.
That shooting followed two others in quick succession, the first on College Street at about 10:40 p.m., according to police. They said people in a Honda Civic opened fire on Springfield police detectives in the firearms investigation unit, none of whom was injured.
Two minutes later, and a minute before the off-duty officer was shot, people in the Jeep shot at detectives who were searching for the first vehicle, Police Superintendent Lawrence Akers has said. Their cruiser was hit five times but the officers were able to escape unscathed.
The people who opened fire "had no regard for life," Akers said last week.
