Police Officer Shot in West Texas Rampage Applauded Outside Odessa Hospital

A Midland, Texas, police officer who was hit multiple times during a gunman’s shooting spree across two West Texas cities on August 31 was applauded as he left a hospital in the city of Odessa on September 4 to see a specialist in Alabama.

The Midland Police Department said Officer Zack Owens’s eye would be evaluated by the specialist, whom they said they hoped would “be able to perform corrective surgeries.”

According to a GoFundMe crowdfunding page set up by Abigail McCullough, who said she was the wife of one of Owens’s cousins, the policeman was “shot multiple times in the arm and hand” and also got glass shards in his eye. His eye injury was the “most serious,” the page said.

Officials said a gunman killed seven people and wounded 25 others as he fired at random while driving through Odessa and Midland on Saturday, August 31. The man, identified by police as Seth Aaron Ator, 36, had been fired from his job that morning and began shooting after being pulled over by police for a traffic stop. The shooting spree ended when Ator was killed by police outside a movie theater in Odessa. Credit: Midland Police Department via Storyful