McHenry County deputies recount shooting, advise officers
Once the shooting started Oct. 16 at a Holiday Hills home, events seemed to move in slow motion for two McHenry County sheriff's deputies.
What deputies Dwight Maness and Khalia Satkiewicz didn't know when they tried to make a routine, early-morning well-being check was that the man inside was armed with an AR15 rifle. Or that his firearm owners identification card had been revoked.
The pair would later learn that Scott B. Peters was said to be aggravated with the government and thought cops were corrupt. But they came to know that only after both were shot in a tense situation that ended after a 16-hour manhunt and the arrest of Peters on two counts of attempted first-degree murder of a police officer.
“What we didn't know also was he was prepared to fight,” Maness told an engrossed audience of about 20 Round Lake Beach officers and others on Friday. “He wasn't prepared to die, though.”
For the first time, the deputies shared a presentation with an outside agency that included real-time radio and dispatch traffic. They recounted their story as a training opportunity to help fellow officers.
“There's a lot of lessons to be had here,” said Maness, who today uses a walker. He rested his bandaged left leg on a pillow propped on a folding chair.
Had they had more information upfront, the situation may have been handled differently, he said.
“Hound your dispatch for information. The more information the better,” he advised.
“You've got to listen to what they say and how they say it,” Satkiewicz said. “You can almost picture him smiling behind the door and saying, ‘C'mon in.'”
She was joined by her husband, Bob, and his parents.
“I think it's good for them and good for everybody else to hear it,” said her mother-in-law, Marilyn Satkiewicz. “It is a good training tool — this is what can happen.”
Maness was shot in the back and twice in the leg. His femur bone was shattered and a three-inch piece of bone is missing, awaiting a repair that will take him off his feet for three or four months. Satkiewicz, a deputy for 13 years, was shot in the leg but today walks without assistance.
“Always prepare for the unexpected because you never know what's going to happen,” said Maness, whose seventh anniversary as a sheriff's deputy was the day of the shooting. He previously spent 20 years in the Army.
At the front door of the Holiday Hills home, the deputies talked with Peters. First he said their help wasn't needed, Maness recalled, and then he told them to come in.
That's when the shooting began, and the pair ran for cover, with a third deputy, Eric Luna, providing cover. Maness said he was trying to get back to his car when he was hit again.
“I didn't hear the shot go off. I didn't feel the shot hit my leg. I just went down,” he said.
His foot turned in another direction. Bleeding badly, Maness said he needed a tourniquet. He usually carried one with him but did not that day.
“We weren't going to stay there and die,” he said.
“Every time you go out there, this can happen to you,” he said. “You're never out of a fight until you're taken out of a fight.”
Maness eventually was dragged hundreds of feet to safety by Island Lake police officer Gilbert Hueramo.
“The biggest thing is remaining calm under stress,” said Joe Couture, a firefighter/paramedic with the Greater Round Lake Fire Protection District.
“I never went into shock, remained calm. That's probably what saved my life,” said Maness, who called his wife, Sue, from the ambulance.
On Friday, she said her husband doesn't mind talking about the shooting.
“It's a really good thing if he can help anybody else,” she said. “He wants to bring insight to anybody.”
The deputies' appearance at Round Lake Beach on Friday was arranged by Cmdr. Gary Lunn and was held in tandem with a Red Cross blood drive organized by officer Marcain Butur, whose father died last August of leukemia. Transfusions kept him alive long enough for Butur to get to Romania to spend time with his dying father.
Friday's goal was 30 pints.
“It worked out perfectly,” Lunn said.