By Jeremy Gorner
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — Pinned down in a hallway as a fugitive fired off shots, Chicago police Capt. Edward Kulbida needed to warn other officers of the firefight, but the reception for his police radio was limited.
Kulbida took one step out the front door of the Englewood neighborhood apartment building, but before he could finish barking out orders over the radio for officers to take up positions around the building, he heard a single shot.
“It knocked me to the ground,” Kulbida said, choking up briefly as he recalled the moment two months ago when he was struck by gunfire. “And when I was lying on the ground, I said to myself, ‘Look, you’re not gonna die. Calm down.’ ”
The highest-ranking Chicago cop to be shot in the line of duty in years returned this week to his post as second in command of the South Side’s Englewood police district.
The shooting left Kulbida with a small scar beside his right eyebrow, where one bullet entered his head, shattered a cheekbone and remains lodged in some tissue. Another bullet struck him in the right shoulder, breaking his collarbone.
He underwent eight weeks of physical therapy and some counseling from the Police Department after the harrowing experience.
“If you think I’m emotional now, you should have seen me back then,” Kulbida said, speaking to reporters Wednesday at the station.
Next time, he joked, he’ll know to duck a little better, “so I wouldn’t get this big head shot again.”
Kulbida was on a lunch break Oct. 7 when his desk officers told him of an anonymous tip that Daniel Brown, a fugitive from Indianapolis who turned out to be wanted in three separate shootings there in recent days, was holed up at an Englewood apartment.
Reaching out to Indianapolis police, Kulbida learned that Chicago police officers from the fugitive apprehension unit as well as deputy U.S. marshals were already staking out the apartment of Brown’s sister in the 7200 block of South Lowe Avenue.
Kulbida sent over a few of his officers to assist but decided to join them there when he heard that officers already on the scene were going to “hit it,” or check the first-floor unit where Brown was believed to be hiding out.
When Kulbida arrived, he went to the back of the building with a few of his officers, while the fugitive apprehension officers and deputy marshals cased the front.
Kulbida then heard a garbled transmission over the police radio that sounded like another officer was calling in gunshots being fired at police.
In response, he and other officers moved to the front of the building and stepped through the front door into the hallway, where one of the fugitive unit officers warned him that Brown was shooting at police. It was then that Kulbida decided to step back outside to warn other officers by radio and he was shot.
“It was something I wish nobody to ever go through,” he told reporters. “It was very, very painful.”
The officers helped Kulbida to the hallway, where the deputy marshals used a first aid kit to bandage his head. But Brown kept firing shots, pinning them down. The wait took 20 to 30 minutes, but it “seemed like for an eternity,” Kulbida said.
“We didn’t know where or when or how to get me out of there or get the ambulance in there,” Kulbida recalled. “It got to the point where I was in such pain, I told the officers ... ‘We got to get me out of here some way somehow.’ ”
The officers then shielded Kulbida while moving through a neighboring apartment and exiting to safety out a back door.
The standoff ended hours later when a SWAT team tossed a “flash bang” grenade into the apartment and rushed in, discovering Brown hiding in a closet and his sister’s boyfriend fatally shot.
Police said about 40 shots were fired in the shootout. Brown is being held on murder, attempted murder and additional charges.
Detective Christopher Ross, one of the officers who helped move Kulbida to safety, was hit by a bullet fragment in his left thigh but didn’t even realize it until he went home about 24 hours after the ordeal.
Kulbida said he still has trouble hearing people talking in loud places, but in spite of his wife’s misgivings, he knew he needed to come back to work.
“When you’re sitting at home and have idle time, your mind starts playing tricks and you start thinking about what could you have done differently,” Kulbida said. “You come to peace once you’re at work. Your mind is sort of distracted.”
Copyright 2014 the Chicago Tribune