Trooper 1st Class Eric Workman returned to work Monday after escaping death when he was shot on duty.
“I?m pretty modest, so this is the most extraordinary thing I?ve ever been through,” Workman said before a room crowded with colleagues, camera crews and reporters assembled for a surprise welcome-back party at the Westminster state police barracks.
“I?m happy to be back,” he said. “This is where I belong.”
Barracks commander Lt. Dean Richardson said he “never expected this day to come” for Workman to return.
Recently named trooper of the year, Workman remained humble as he recounted the details of the nearly fatal arrest Dec. 12, when a robbery suspect in an earlier Eldersburg home invasion shot him in the left armpit in Woodlawn.
First, he said, he made sure his girlfriend, Deborah Zittel, a trooper at the Golden Ring barracks in Middle River, was alerted.
Then, as he waited for a helicopter to fly him to University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, he requested that he be treated by Thomas Scalea, the “miracle” doctor who cared for him in 1998 after a motorist struck him.
Workman asked the paramedic to stay with him at the Woodlawn row house where robbery suspect Steven Tyrone Jones, 38, shot him before police fire killed Jones.
“Fourth, I concentrated on breathing deeply, to not lose my wits about me and panic,” he said. “The will to survive” is powerful.
Standing a few yards from a black and gold “Welcome Back” sign, Zittel recalled the horror of learning her boyfriend had been shot.
“My father called to ask if I was all right, because he had heard a trooper had been shot,” she said.
“I said, ?Oh my God, Dad, Eric?s not here.? It was sheer terror.”
But Workman “is so strong,” added Zittel, who beamed as she picked fuzz off his shirt.
A safer job behind a desk is not for Workman, who is also the lead investigator in the Carroll Schisler Sr. case, in which the Carroll County farmer is charged with animal cruelty and selling tainted meat.
“We face dangers every day,” he said. “It?s what we signed up to do.”
