DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A metro Atlanta officer and his family are in distraught after he was shot in the head during the line of duty last Tuesday.
Lt. Collar now has a small skull fracture and two minor bleeds on the brain after a traffic stop gone wrong.
"I probably won’t be here today if it was a half-inch lower or a different angle, this could have been a different story," Lt. Collar said.
The situation began early Tuesday morning, when a license plate reader alerted Chamblee Police to a stolen car allegedly connected to a robbery that was in their area.
The officers tried to stop the car, but say the driver fled. The vehicle later crashed on Briarcliff Way and both people inside the car tried to run. One was taken into custody, but Chamblee Police say the passenger shot at them.
A bullet came flying through his windshield hitting him during the stop.
"At the end of the traffic stop, some rounds were fired in my direction, one went through the windshield and grazed the top of my head, entered the front part of my skull and exited the back of it," Lt. Collar described.
Lt. Collar said that’s when things became blurry as he was taken to the hospital. The shooting took an emotional toll on he and his family.
"He ended up telling me he had been shot, he wouldn’t tell me where, eventually he did," Lt Collar's wife said.
She and Lt. Collar asked 11Alive not to use their full names, being scared for their safety as two suspects await their day in court.
The officer said he’s ready and willing to run back into harms way to help others.
"If I could go back to work today I would be ready to go right now if I could, but when you start thinking about how close it was and that it could have been lights out, that would have been it," Lt. Collar said.
Police arrested one suspect soon after the incident and later took Oscar Arreola into custody after a 16-hour search.
He’s charged with aggravated assault for allegedly shooting Lt. Collar.
"I just hope that this person knows what he did to us and how much this has all caused so many issues," his wife said in a message to Arreola.