I heard the 'click, click. We started struggling. I knew he had a gun. And I knew he was trying to shoot me."
First-year patrol officer Kim Noorbergen was working the midnight shift, driving down a street known as “Crack Alley,” when two people flagged her down and said they’d been robbed. On that night in 1990, they told her the man who robbed them was standing on a nearby porch. As Noorbergen walked up to the porch, she recognized the suspect – he was a regular, someone she’d dealt with again and again.
Noorbergen had him turn around and put his hands up. She started to pat him down, beginning with his left side. Then the man reached into his back right waistband and pulled out a revolver.
A man inside the home yelled, “He’s got a gun!” The suspect put the gun to Noorbergen’s head and pulled the trigger twice.
It misfired both times.