MONTGOMERY COUNTY (KYW Newsradio) — The Montgomery County sheriff’s deputy who was struck by a stray bullet near the Art Museum of Philadelphia on the Fourth of July, says he had no fear for his safety on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway that night — and he would not be scared to attend similar events in the city.
“It sounds weird, but I’m glad it hit me and not some kid,” said Deputy John Foster.
He was on the bomb squad, waiting for fireworks to start, when he felt something hit him on the shoulder.
“I thought somebody threw something at us,” he said.
Another officer told Foster he was shot.
“I was like, ‘Nah, I didn't get shot. Somebody threw something at me. I'm good,’” he recalled. “And they're like, ‘Nope, you’re shot. Let's go.’”
He saw Philadelphia Highway Patrol officer Sergio Diggs had also been injured. They later discovered it was a graze wound.
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“He's probably, maybe 10 to 20 feet away from me, holding his head and bent over. So I'm like, ‘Oh, man, he got hit with something, too.’”
Foster says now that he knows it was likely celebratory gunfire, from a mile away or more, and that he and Diggs weren’t targeted, “It's a relief, if that makes sense.”
He says security that night was, in his words, “phenomenal.”
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“I won't stop going down there. This is a freak accident, if you call it that. And again, you can't prepare for that,” he said.
“Everybody was out enjoying themselves. I saw a ton of families walking around. Everybody was having fun. There was no problems, whatsoever.”
But he does hope this is a wake-up call for people who think it’s okay to fire a gun in the air.
“I mean, it's physics. What goes up must come down. And it's gonna hurt somebody. It's not like you're shooting fireworks up in the air. You're shooting your firearm. It's going to hit somebody, it's going to hurt them. Simple as that.”