“Instead of an injured stowaway, we were eight miles out at sea at the tail end of a hurricane, facing an armed barricaded EDP who was bleeding. On top of all that he was from Africa where the threat of AIDS is really big. We had no specialty equipment, no Tasers, no heavy ballistic vests, nothing. I looked at John and said, ‘Okay, here we go.’” – John Busching
A Sneak Peek of Chapter Six — John Busching
After the interview with John Busching:
John has retired from the New York City Police Department. He is serving as the fire chief in his local town and just received a medal of valor for rescuing two people from a burning building. He’s also working for the South Hampton Police Department as a tactical medic. His first assignment was to insure the safety of Vice President Joe Biden when he made a trip to the town on Long Island. An honor roll student who loves sports and plays the saxophone, John’s son Joseph is doing extremely well in school. John is hopeful the transition to middle school will go smoothly. John and his wife Chris just celebrated their twentieth wedding anniversary at the Mohonck Mountain House in upstate New York.
John got a call at the tail end of a hurricane to participate in one of the most dramatic rescues in NYPD history. Eight miles out to sea, the police were told that a crew member on a container ship was bleeding and needed to be transported to the hospital. Swinging wildly in the wind, John and his partner, each attached only by a single cable to a helicopter hovering eighty feet in the air, descended to the deck of a container ship. Once they were on board, they learned what they were really facing—two stowaways armed with knives threatening to kill anyone who tried to take them off the ship.