HARTFORD, Conn. — New insight has emerged from the officer who survived the deadly ambush in Bristol that claimed the lives of Lt. Dustin Demonte and Sgt. Alex Hamzy in October 2022, WFSB reported. Officer Alec Iurato recently shared his emotional account of that tragic night in a podcast interview with Gold Shields, hosted by former NYPD detectives.
During the hour-and-a-half-long episode, Iurato recalled the day of the shooting, which began with routine training and ended with the fatal encounter.
“It was probably the nicest day you could imagine in October,” he said. “About 70 degrees, sunny, and not a cloud in the sky.”
That morning, Iurato had trained with Demonte and Hamzy, his close friends. Later that day, all three responded to a domestic call in Bristol that turned out to be a premeditated ambush. Demonte and Hamzy were fatally shot, and Iurato was wounded.
In the podcast, Iurato described the moment he realized he was the only one still alive.
“I start moving towards the driveway, and that’s when I ended up seeing him laying there in the driveway,” he said, recalling the first time he saw what had happened to his fellow officers. “That moment broke me. Not just because of what I had to do, but because I had no idea what truly happened to Alex and Dustin.”
Iurato ultimately shot and killed the gunman, preventing further loss of life. He was later honored for his bravery with an induction into the National Law Enforcement Officer Hall of Fame. He credits his survival to the swift actions of fellow officers who responded, and the training they had all undergone earlier that same day.
BWC video of the 2022 OIS
“I revert that back to the fact that we were in that active shooter training, and it couldn’t have been, oddly enough, a perfect time for that training, because our guys were completely squared away and they handled it perfectly,” he said.
Now serving in the department’s training division, Iurato says he hopes to use his experience to prepare and support the next generation of officers.
“I look at it [as] my opportunity to give back…” he said. “If I can take anything from these courses, from my experiences from that horrible incident, and push that forward to new officers, to recruits, to our department in any way, I’m going to do it.”
